Walmart Part 3_Planning

How does managerial planning for Project Impact take place at different levels within the organization?

• The planning process starts with top managers who are responsible for establishing a formal mission that defines the basic purpose of the organization. According to Walmart’s official, strategic planning is “Save money. Live better.” “ Win, Play, Show” and “Fast, Friendly, Clean.”
• Next level will be the tactical level where middle managers are responsible to formulate tactical plans that focus on the major actions in part of strategic goal. Castro-Wright's team cut 15 percent reduction of the store inventory, make shelves lowered as customer can easily see and categorize product according department so that customers take spend less time finding what they need.
• Lastly, operational level where lower management are responsible in identify the specific procedure and process needed at lower level of the organization. Walmart making a massive makeover of the store where store aisles are wider, assortment of product sell are tidy and also merchandise is marked with bigger bolder signage to attract the customers. Walmart also remove from using high shelves and discontinue the super-promotion aisle "Action Alley".

Using the concepts of strategic management and core competence, explain why Walmart is scaling back on “cheap chic” fashion apparel in its remodeled next-generation stores.

• Strategic management is the set of decisions and actions used to formulate and execute strategies that will provide competitively superior fit between the organization and its environment to achieve organizational goals. According to strategic management, there is manager question states that what products or services we should offer and how can we offer them most efficiently? Walmart scaling back on cheap chic because it fails in choosing the products that should be offer to make the product most efficiently.
• Walmart’s merchandising strategy is to fewer products in stores, must be selective about which products to carry, and more committed to selling in larger volume. Walmart is loading up on hot gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone 4, iPad, 3D TVs and also cheap chic fashion. However, the cheap chic designer apparel is getting the ace.
• In core competence, a company is something the organization does especially well in comparison to its competitors. Walmart focus on a core competence of operational efficiency that enables them keep costs low. Walmart scaling back on cheap chic because maybe there are other organization do well in comparison to his company even it has cheap chip fashion or Walmart are leak provide product that are better than other competitors.

What started the decision-making process that led to the overhaul of Walmart’s U.S. stores? What common errors in decision-making could thwart the success of Project Impact?

• The decision started from recognition of problem and opportunity where the idea according to Castro-Wright that found that customers on average spend only 21 minutes in their stores. If Walmart can’t make it easy for those customers to shop during the 21 minutes, the possibility that they are going to buy is less.
• The common error that could thwart the success of Project Impact is overconfidence. The manager fails to collect information because too sure of own assumptions, overestimate the ability and predict uncertain outcome. Besides that, another error is seeing what you want to see. The manager may only look for information that support their existing instinct or point of view and avoid information that contradicts it. Lastly, justifying past decision where manager assume experience is obvious and there is no need to analysis the result forecast.