Search results

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

This research paper concentrates on Walmart's launch of the mobile app shopping delivery subscription service, Walmart Plus. Discounted gas gives it an edge over Amazon Prime, yet Walmart Plus lacks the streaming services of Amazon Prime. After a relatively slow start in consistently growing the service across all demographics, Walmart Plus leaders are advised to seriously consider going organic, leveraging the powerful reach of social media influencers, and integrating online with Walmart-owned Sam's Club.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

Identity movements rely on a shared “we-feeling” among a community of participants. In turn, such shared identities are possible when movement participants can self-categorize themselves as belonging to one group. We address a debate as to whether community diversity enhances or impedes such protests, and investigate the role of racial diversity since it is a simple, accessible, and visible basis of community diversity and social categorization. We focus on American communities’ protests against Walmart's entry from 1998 until 2005 and ask whether racial diversity affects protests after accounting for a community's sense of pride and attachment to their town. We use distance from historical monuments as a proxy of a community's pride and attachment, and after controlling for it, we find that community's racial homogeneity significantly increases protests against Walmart.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how appraisal resources and legitimation strategies, concerning “associates” and “suppliers” in Walmart’s Corporate Social Responsibility reports from 2011 to 2013, contribute to the representation of a positive corporate image.

This paper draws upon Appraisal Theory (Martin and White, 2005) and Legitimation Theory (van Leeuwen, 2007) to explore the link between evaluative language and legitimacy concerning abovementioned search terms.

Walmart’s representations of its stance towards “associates” and “suppliers” differ greatly, although the corporation communicates a positive self-image through both of them. Walmart portrays its relationship with its “associates” as cooperative and mutually beneficial. On the other hand, the corporation presents the image of a philanthropist organisation that has been trying to improve the poor working conditions of its “suppliers” through strict regulations.

Only a small amount of data could be analysed manually due to the special nature of evaluative language and legitimation.

This paper fulfils an identified need in studying social reporting in terms of linguistic resources.

This paper aims to examine the role of social auditing in legitimising the relationship between the buyer and supplier firms rather than strengthening corporate accountability in the global supply chain.

Applying case study methodology and drawing on Suchman’s theory on societal legitimacy, it is argued that social audits are artefacts of legitimacy, and global firms dominate the buyer–supplier relationship across the supply chain. The analysis is based on data collected from different secondary sources, including Walmart’s corporate sustainability reports.

Using Walmart’s relationship with Tazreen Fashions Limited around the Tazreen factory fire incident as a case study, it explains that the practices which attempt to symbolically demonstrate accountability from social audits need to shift to a more continuous and sincere demonstration of accountability through the social audit process. For this to occur, the cognitive and pragmatic approaches that international buyers have previously used in auditing their supply firms’ social responsibility are no longer sufficient to achieve societal legitimacy. Instead, a moral turn needs to underpin the intentions and actions of these buyers to maintain legitimacy and demonstrate accountability across the supply industry in developing economies.

The findings of the study answer the questions raised in the extant literature about the expectation from social auditing and whether social auditing serves to ensure corporate accountability. The paper contributes to the policymaking discussion of how social auditing can be configured to include a legal provision to ensure that social auditing is not a parroting tool for corporations.

The motivation for this paper arises from the evolution of the e‐commerce which has provided new means for retailers to serve customers. Pure e‐tailers and clicks‐and‐mortars are two business models of this new paradigm. It aims to study the particularities of pure e‐tailer (Amazon.com) and clicks‐and‐mortars (Walmart) with special focus on their dot com supply chains.

Strengths, weaknesses, oppositions, threats (SWOT), the Five Forces Model and Financial Performance Metrics analyses were used to draw comparisons and contrasts between Walmart.com and Amazon.com supply chains.

The paper finds that both companies serve their customers effectively through their efficient supply chains; however, due to the infancy of e‐commerce, both business models still face important challenges.

Amazon.com and Walmart.com have different supply chain models, as well as, strengths and weaknesses. They both face the same opportunities and threats as the e‐commerce industry grows rapidly. Analysis shows how lessons from one business entity can be applied to the other in order to bring even more efficiencies to both e‐tailers’ and clicks and mortars’ supply chains.

The Covid crisis led to a huge worldwide shift in consumer behavior. In response, Walmart’s revised business strategy promoted their online delivery service known as Walmart Plus. This study aims to critique the potential of this new venture via a customer value analysis.

Using the customer value funnel, Walmart’s market environment, organizational factors, customer perceptions and business performance are examined. An exploratory survey collected data from South Florida residents on awareness and interest in Walmart Plus.

The changing marketplace forced Walmart to quickly adapt to online buyers and emphasize the value of their retail and grocery products. Walmart Plus is an alternative to Amazon Prime and can assist the company gain market share in regional grocery markets.

This work is largely conceptual and presents a case study featuring a limited sample in one metropolitan statistical area. While the findings are insightful, it may not be representative of the US market.

Corporate executives and entrepreneurs must respond to changing market conditions and rethink their business models to deliver superior customer value. This requires introducing innovative services and digital initiatives to compete successfully. The paper concludes with recommendations for management and questions for consideration.

Walmart is the dominant American retailer and a global leader. While there has been considerable research on this retail giant, there has been limited analysis of their digital initiatives such as Walmart Plus.

The purpose of this paper is to combine secondary sources and interviews with Chinese suppliers to explore the structural paradox faced by retail multinational firms in China as they balance the competing demands of standardization and localization. The authors describe the challenges faced by two retail giants, Walmart and Carrefour, as they attempt to replicate in China their lean retailing successes elsewhere in the world.

This is a comparative study of Walmart's and Carrefour's ventures into the Chinese market, largely based on publicly available secondary sources, but also incorporating interviews with three Chinese nationals engaged in supplying these firms.

Walmart and Carrefour have so far failed to extend their oligopolistic dominance to the Chinese market. Walmart has stressed its well‐known standardization of operations, whereas Carrefour has better adapted to the Chinese economic culture. Issues identified are: the formation of partnership alliances and their impact on store location choice; the effect of under‐developed infrastructure on distribution and logistics; the unique Chinese business culture – guanxi (using social capital to build business relationships) and its influence on supplier relationships; the variety of consumer behavior and its effect on procurement and sourcing; and an immature information technology environment which impedes information sharing between supply chain partners. While both firms have had some degree of success, neither has been able to match the combined growth of their larger Chinese competitors.

The authors are cautious in drawing normative conclusions or making predictions about the future. Both firms face significant obstacles as they challenge China's largest domestic retailers.

Many multinational corporations are aware of the topology of the Chinese market, what they lack is an in‐depth understanding and the skills needed for effective operations. This paper discusses the effectiveness of the strategies adopted by two leading global retailers as they attempt to resolve the paradox presented by the competing demands for standardization and localization and includes information provided by three of Walmart's and Carrefour's local Chinese suppliers.

This paper seeks to analyze strategies used to communicate CSR to public audiences via the internet in Maersk and WalMart in order to examine the influence of national culture from the headquarters of each of these global corporations. The purpose of the paper is to further understanding about how CSR is framed and developed within the cultural bounds of a given nation.

The paper extends Donaldson and Preston's model of interaction between the corporation and its stakeholders through a cultural systems approach. The notion of cultural systems is combined with three of Roome's CSR agendas – diversity, sustainable environment, and community involvement/corporate philanthropy – to examine presentations of corporate social responsibility on Maersk and Walmart corporate web sites.

The consequences in corporate web site discourse about CSR in Maersk and WalMart are strikingly different. With respect to all three CSR agendas, the WalMart site includes a more detailed explanation of its efforts, rooted in local communities in the USA. In contrast, the Maersk site CSR section includes less detail, and a focus on efforts mainly in communities outside of Denmark. These differences in discourse imply different expectations from the public emerging from cultural system differences in the USA and Denmark. Thus, even though WalMart is not necessarily more involved with CSR efforts than Maersk, it has a greater need to express its CSR activities in detail due to the differences in expectations rooted in the US and Danish cultural systems.

Introducing an approach for understanding corporation‐stakeholder interactions and the expression of corporate social responsibility to the public via corporate web sites as situated in cultural systems.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications in business by merging previously unconnected lines of thought in communications and law. Using Walmart as an example, the study shows that CSR communication can legitimize a corporation’s autonomous legal system of regulation and governance over its business practices.

A qualitative case study of all online corporate communications webpages from Walmart was examined. Discourse and qualitative analyses were used to show how language and online communications practices created actional legitimacy for Walmart’s CSR practices.

Using the UN’s Guiding Principles for Business as a framework for analysis, the study demonstrated how CSR communications helps Walmart to establish its own system of CSR norms, structures and remediation processes for its business outside of the state. These communications also sought to legitimize these actions among stakeholders.

This case study looks at one corporation (Walmart) to illustrate a new connection between CSR communication and legitimacy. Future research in communications can extend this line of inquiry by examining how communications can reinforce autonomous legal systems and public perceptions.

Backer’s (2007) autonomous legal system and the concept of actional legitimacy in communications have not yet been studied systematically. This case study demonstrates how CSR communications can legitimize a multinational corporation’s business practices, which, in turn, raises ethical considerations for the ways this communication serves the greater society.

Walmart achieved extraordinary success and growth in its home country before embarking on a strategy of international expansion. While most of Walmart¹s international expansion efforts were successful, the retailer experienced some challenges in Germany and South Korea, exiting both less than ten years after initial entry. In 2016, Walmart announced the closure of 269 stores worldwide. Although most Walmart stores are now outside the USA, the performance of these stores lag their US counterparts. Walmart has not been able to simply export its “Everyday Low Price” approach. It is important to understand cultural differences in the way people shop in addition to understanding the market, economy and laws of various regions around the world.

Walmart’s successes and missteps in each country are analyzed. The studies looked at each country’s culture, shopping habits and discuss what worked and what did not in each country. The authors hope that managers planning international expansion will learn from the successes and failures of this giant retailer.

Walmart has a significant presence in Mexico, the UK, Brazil, China and Canada. It has been successful in countries where it has adapted the Walmart model to the local market. International expansion for Walmart, along with other retailers, is now being highly impacted by the growth in online shopping. However, the use of technology for shopping is not a homogenous global experience. The increased demand for online retailers suggests that firms slow down (but not stop) brick and mortar international expansion.

Considering the projected growth in online shopping, retailers with global aspirations need to have a strong and sustainable competitive advantage (e.g. products, operations, marketing and brand name reputation) in addition to a clear internationalization plan. The same factors critical to brick and mortar expansion are applicable to online growth. Having a successful, long-term presence in selected countries requires a clear understanding of each country’s infrastructure, demographics, political and economic systems, in addition to cultural awareness and an understanding of shopping practices.

The growth of online shopping internationally will also fundamentally alter international expansion for Walmart and other retailers. Interestingly, Chinese shoppers may be leading the trend in online shopping, as nearly 65 percent of Chinese shoppers use their mobile phones for online shopping, are more likely to buy from off-shore online retailers and are more likely to use their mobile phones to compare prices than either Canadian or US shoppers (PWC, 2016). Walmart’s recent acquisition of Jet.com is sending a clear signal that brick and mortar shopping is not the only way to expand internationally.

This original work about Walmart’s growth strategy internationally is unique. This work will be of great value to managers thinking of expanding internationally. The non-embracing of local cultural habits and use of non-local managers is something that can be easily overlooked when thinking of expansion. Serious financial consequences can be easily avoided by being aware of the mistakes that others have made.