SWOTT Analysis – Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Wal-Mart) operates retail stores in various formats worldwide. The company was founded in 1945, and is based in Bentonville, Arkansas. Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer, with total revenues of $344,992 million reported in 2007 (Wal-Mart Stores.com, 2008). The company’s Wal-Mart Stores segment offers general merchandise such as apparel, home furnishings, pet needs electronics, cell phones, and a variety of other items. Its Sam’s Club segment provides hard goods, soft goods, institutional-size grocery items, and selected private-label items, as well as software, electronics, jewelry, exercise equipment, outdoor goods, tires, office supplies, and books; and photo processing, pharmaceuticals, optical departments, and gasoline stations through warehouse membership clubs in the United States, as well as through samsclub.com. The company’s international segment includes various formats of retail stores and restaurants, including combination discount and grocery stores, super centers, Sam’s Clubs, hypermarkets, supermarkets, cash-n-carry stores, neighborhood markets, department stores, and general merchandise stores (Wal-Mart Stores.com, 2008).
Wal-Mart is an organization that has been extremely successful in achieving its goal of becoming the top retail store in the world. Managers for this organization must plan, organize, lead, and control each component of this organization in order to secure its success. There are both internal and external environmental factors that can impact these four functions within an organization. The internal environmental factors that are most important to Wal-Mart include price, place, production, and product. External environmental factors include economic, political, legal, social, cultural, and technological elements. After analyzing the external environment and internal resources, strategic managers have the information they need to put together corporate, business, and...