Wal-Mart company-customer relationships Essay
Today, Wal-Mart pays a lot of attention to the improvement of the company-customer relationships. In this regard, the company uses different tools to assess the effectiveness and quality of its company-customer relationships, including the balanced score cards approach. The balanced score cards approach is considered to be effective but still it is obvious that this method alone is imperfect and insufficient to conduct the in-depth analysis of the relationship between the company and customers, especially in case of such a large company as Wal-Mart. Nevertheless, Wal-Mart has already applied the balanced score cards approach and this method has proved to be quite efficient because it has allowed the company to conduct the assessment of its company-customer relationships and define the major weaknesses and problems the company has at the moment.
First of all, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that Wal-Mart has introduced the balanced score cards approach since the company noticed the consistent deterioration of its public image and the development of the negative view of company among customers. In fact, customers grew more and more concerned with environmental issues and policies conducted by the company in relation to its employees. These issues became subjects to severe criticism from the part of the public and customers. Therefore, the company had to change its policies but to make any changes the company needed the effective method, which could help the company to identify its current problems and find possible solutions to existing problems. In this regard, the company attempted to use the balanced score cards approach to conduct the in-depth analysis of its current relationships with customers and to identify causes of problems and possible solutions.
In fact, the balanced score cards approach applied by Wal-Mart has proved to be efficient because the company has managed to identify key areas causing the tension in its relationships with customers. First of all, the company revealed the fact that customers are extremely concerned with environmental issues, whereas the company was viewed by customers as a threat to the environment. As a result, customers developed a negative view of company and the negative public image deteriorated its organizational performance consistently. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the company used the balanced score cards effectively because this method allowed the company to receive feedback from customers and the company could receive basic information on customers’ needs and expectations as well as on existing problems. In fact, Wal-Mart constructed large retail stores, which attracted a large number of customers. The growth of the number of customers naturally led to the increase of the traffic. The latter, in its turn, led to the increase of green house gas emissions and deterioration of the environmental situation in the local area. In such a way, opening of new stores of Wal-Mart led to the consistent deterioration of the environmental situation and the public grow more and more concerned with the impact of Wal-Mart on the environment.
Furthermore, the company attempted to improve its relationships with customers through the development of close relationships with its customers. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact the company identified the major problems in its relationships with customers, which referred not only to the environmental issues but also to the impact of Wal-Mart on the local economy because the public grow being dissatisfied with the negative impact of Wal-Mart on small businesses, which could not afford competition with such a giant as Wal-Mart. To put it more precisely, small business could not maintain the competitive struggle, when Wal-Mart, being one of the largest retailers, defeated all their efforts through the large volume of sales and low prices. As a result, small businesses were in decline under the impact of Wal-Mart. In such a situation, the company used the balanced score cards approach to identify these problems and to find plausible solutions to them.
Thus, taking into account all above mentioned, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that Wal-Mart is one of the largest retailers in the US and the world. Today, the company uses the balanced score cards approach to conduct the detailed analysis of its relationships with customers, to identify current problems and to find plausible solutions. At the same time, Wal-Mart should use other methods to conduct the study of its company-customer relationships because the balanced score cards alone are not enough to conduct the in-depth analysis of the company-customer relationships. In this regard, interviews and questionnaires could be helpful.
