Marketing performance of Wal-Mart Essay

Wal-Mart holds a leading position in the retail industry in the US and the company attempts to expand its market internationally. At the same time, the marketing performance of Wal-Mart depends, to a significant extent, on the organizational style and key systems of the organization because they affect the organizational structure and strategy. Nevertheless, the company should be very careful in regard to the development of effective marketing strategy because it should take into consideration customers’ needs and expectations and develop effective management and leadership style along with the improvement of key systems to maximize the effectiveness of the organizational performance.
In actuality, Wal-Mart tends to the development of the authoritarian organizational style, where leaders and managers play the key role in the organizational performance and regulate the work of employees. At the same time, it is obvious that the company can improve its organizational performance consistently on the condition of developing a more flexible and tolerant leadership and management style. In actuality, the authoritarian management and leadership style defines the style of the organizational development and, in the contemporary business environment, this organizational style is apparently out of date. To put it more precisely, the company should provide its employees with the larger autonomy to make them feel more comfortable and to increase their job satisfaction because the autonomy of employees contributes to their effective performance and high job satisfaction. In such a way, the company should change its leadership and management style. At this point, it is worth mentioning the fact that the authoritarian leadership style is extremely dangerous because it may provoke conflicts within the organization. Employees grow dissatisfied with their jobs and they feel uncomfortable in their workplace. As a result, their performance deteriorates that naturally leads to the overall deterioration of the organizational performance. In such a context, Wal-Mart conducts ineffective policies in relation to its employees, whereas the authoritarian organizational style aggravates the situation even more.
In such a situation, key systems of the organization have to be assessed and it is particularly important to focus on how they operate. In such a way, the company should develop its key systems to improve its organizational performance. The company should pay a particular attention to its human resource management and internal business operations because they are particularly important for the development of effective marketing strategy. In fact, the development of human resource management and effective internal business processes is still one of the priorities of Wal-Mart but the company still fails to reach these goals.
At the same time, the company pays a lot of attention to the development of positive company-customer relationships, which comprise the key system and an integral part of the organizational performance of Wal-Mart. At this point, Wal-Mart has reached considerable success due to the effective pricing policies but still the company faces the problem of the deterioration of the company-customer relationships because of the growing dissatisfaction of local communities with the impact of Wal-Mart on the local environment and businesses. Basically, representatives of local communities believe that Wal-Mart has a negative impact on the environment of communities and a destructive impact on small businesses in local communities. In such a situation, Wal-Mart apparently needs consistent improvements in its key systems.
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning the fact that the style and system should fit with the organization’s structure and strategy. In case of Wal-Mart, it is hardly possible to estimate that its style and system are the perfect match with its structure and strategy. In actuality, Wal-Mart focuses on the international market expansion but this marketing strategy can hardly succeed, if the company has a bunch of internal problems and deteriorating company-customer relationships. The company has uncertain and unsteady ground for the aggressive international market expansion and this strategy may fail if the company does not change its key systems and organizational style.
At the same time, the organizational structure of Wal-Mart is too complicated and bureaucratic. The lack of employees’ autonomy deteriorates the effectiveness of their performance. In such a situation, the company has to develop new, more effective organizational structure, which is more flexible and meet needs of the company and its employees.
Therefore, it is possible to suggest some recommendations for Wal-Mart to follow. First of all, the company should refuse from its authoritarian style and move toward a democratic and liberal one. The company should grant its employees with larger autonomy and develop positive company-customer relationships. For this purpose, the company should participate in the life of local communities to improve the public image of the company and to gain the community’s approval.