Walmarts Organizational Structure free essay sample

In 1962, in Roger, Arkansas, Sam Walton had this brilliant idea that American consumers needed a different type of store so he opened Wal-Mart on the other hand in the same year, Dayton Hudson corporation opened â€Å"The first Target store in 1962 in the Minneapolis suburb of Roseville, Minn. , with a focus on convenient shopping at competitive discount prices. Today, Target remains committed to providing a one-stop shopping experience for guests by delivering differentiated merchandise and outstanding value with its Expect More. Pay Less ® brand promise. Target currently is the second largest general merchandise retailer in America, with Target. com consistently being ranked as one of the most-visited retail Web sites. † (Target. com) Organizational Structure is a way that an organization arranges people and jobs so that it can be executed and its goals and objectives can be met. Wal-Mart was constructed into a three product divisional structure. The successful world retailer’s business categories include Wal-Mart Stores, Sams Club, and International stores. Wal-Mart was built on three beliefs such as great customer service, striving for excellence, and respecting other individual. Like Wal-Mart, Target also strives on customer satisfaction. Targets objective is to make themselves the preferred shopping destination for their guests by giving them vale, innovation, and an outstanding experience. (Target, 2010) Wal-Mart and Target, being the two largest retail stores in the U. S. , are focused on providing their customers with great products and low prices. Their Organizational structure is vertical; however with the way that it is growing, it is more horizontal due to the fact that it is expanding globally. With Target being vertical as well, they focus the marketing on the middle class while Wal-Mart gets a lower class. Wal-Mart is breaking out into being more global but Target is just branching out to global countries such as India. With Wal-Mart having over 8500 retail locations under 55 banners in 15 countries and having more than 2 million people on their team â€Å"Target Corporation is an upscale discount retailer that provides high-quality, on-trend merchandise at attractive prices in clean, spacious and guest-friendly stores. In addition, Target operates an online business, Target. com. Minneapolis-based Target serves guests at 1,763 stores in 49 states and at Target. com, and also operates 37 distribution centers nationally. Target also has more than 355,000 team members worldwide and is consistently recognized as an employer of choice. † (Target,2010) Both companies are focused on going above and beyond their objectives and providing great value, products, and services. Their differences occur when Wal-Mart aggressively lets everyone who wants to save money where they need to go. Target goes after the middle class shoppers who want more name brand products at a general price. As we look at Wal-Mart’s Organizational Function, their marketing plan is simplicity. Their competitors are retail stores that focus on the same products and services, but however, Wal-Mart stays ahead of the competition by thriving off being the leader of low prices. Their approach is monopolistic because they are the most convenient as far as location and store hours. They offer twenty four our services and they have many locations to go to. The Wal-Mart supercenters are making it hard for a lot of stores to stay open and even struggling with the profits of the stores such as grocery stores. Wal-Mart offers a variety of products and services which includes Auto-Care, Optical Department, Urgent Care facilities, hair and nails, Home amp; Garden department, fast food chain, food products, clothes, and jewelry. They also use advertising with television ads and online services as well for a marketing approach. With the advertising, they let their customers know that they have the lowest prices of any retailer and they will continue dropping if another competitor tries to beat their quality and prices. Organizational Function of Finance within Wal-Mart is that every businesses goal is to make a profit worth staying in business for. Organizational Function of Finance comes with trying to figure out when is the need to let some of your employees go in order to increase operational efficiencies, support strategic growth plans and help reduce their overall costs. Now the organizational function of Human Resources within Wal-Mart makes it mandatory for employees to train on diversity and ethics. They also conduct more training sessions on leadership, customer ervice, and mentoring programs. Organizational Design is the alignment of structure, process, rewards, metrics and talent with the strategy of the business. Organizational Design may involve strategic decisions, but is properly viewed as a path to effective strategy execution. Departmentalization in a corporation means for a corporation to be divided into different divisions and each division within the company has its own goals and task to accomplish. A divisional structure is broken down into three different areas such as product, market, and geographic. Managers have a responsibility to focus on the structure of the store and bring in positive results. Another organizational design is product structure, market structure, and geographic structure. Geographic structures groups their employees based on the geographical location which Wal-Mart uses this structure because it has stores running globally. Finally matrix structure groups their employees by function and product within the different departments. This structure is one of the most difficult structures. An example is Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart International being organized as follows, sales department, customer service, and accounting. However Sam’s Club is a little bit different because they would have the same departments, but have their own projects and tasks. In conclusion, Wal-Mart being a successful retail store has a horizontal Structure. It was compared and contrasted to the second largest retail store in Target. Organizational functions in marketing are simplicity and constantly push for being the low price leader. Organizational function in finance has a goal of keeping their CEO happy and customers happy at all times. Organizational function in human resources and operation is where they often train in different areas such as diversity and ethics. Organizational design helps Wal-Mart determine what best fits them and their corporation as a whole.