Walmart Market Segment

Collaboration is the process of two or more people or organizations working together to complete a job or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. At a less detailed level, there are a number of common bases for collaborative advantage, these include:

• Access to resources: organization often collaborate if they are unable to achieve their goals with their owns resources'. Sometimes this simply means collecting financial or human recourses, but more often it implies the bringing together of different resources including technology or knowledge and experience.
• Shared risk: sharing of risk as a reason for collaboration is, in a sense, the direct opposite of the access to resource argument, in this case the organization collaborate simply because the consequences of breakdown on a project are too high for them to risk taking it on one.
• Efficiency: we should start up front that we see efficiency as a problematic nation for collaborative advantage. However efficiency arguments are often made for collaborating and take many from. Governments have often seen private organizations as being more efficient than public ones. The latter has promoted public private partnerships (collaboration). Four different perspectives on efficiency:

1. Efficiency stems from the notion of economies of scale

2. Efficiency linked to outsourcing activities

3. Operational efficiency

4. Coordination of services as to avoid duplication and thus ensure efficiency

• Co-ordination and seamlessness: As seen above, coordination is an important element to achieve efficiency. Coordination is the work of organizing, making different people or things work together for a goal or effect to complete desired goals in an organization. Coordination is a managerial function in which diverse activities of the business are properly adjusted and interlinked. Yet, coordination and seamlessness are not always inter related: Repetition, omission, divergence and Counter production are pitfalls obstructing collaboration.
• Learning: as with the arguments for efficiency, those for learning take a number of appearances. While collaborations are commonly set up to follow some joint activity some are created with them on the fact of it more self-effacing, aim of mutual learning.
• The moral imperative: there is no other way some would argue that the most important reason for being worried with the collaboration is a moral one, this rests on the belief that the really important issues facing society poverty ,crime, drug cannot be tackled by any organization acting alone.

To talk to this chance of collaboration, Walmart had two programs that particularly targeted local producers the Direct Farm program, which worked with farmers in developing countries to supply fresh fruits and vegetables for Walmart's local stores, The Empowering Women Together (EWT) program sourced unique, hand-made outfit, jewelry, home goods, and food products made by small, women-owned and women-empowering project and offered these products to Walmart's online customers.

In both programs, Walmart was working with small and medium producers from the developing world who had mostly sold their products in informal local markets and had small or no previously experience in accessing a global retailer's supply chain. So Walmart play the role of Inter-Company collaboration over taking a product to the market as one company provides the product and the other provides the access to the market.Raising transparency and product quality is good for business and also for society.

Walmart Foundation worked with a variety of partners in different countries to support smallholder farmers. These partners included development organizations, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which provided market information and access as well as financial and other resources; technical experts that provided agronomic advice, such as Techno Serve; and capacity-building organizations, such as Fintrac

Meet clients' needs for transparency and product quality lead to innovation in product development and production, which lead to increase sales and gain customer trust.

In the following three strategies, they set transparency and quality of products:

• promote food and general merchandise product safety
• lowering chemicals of concern
• reinforce animal welfare

Sales volume, extent of operation and wide customer base: Walmart has been able to hold a huge market share by selling almost everything, and their slogan was lowest price, everywhere. because it sales a huge number of items ,its make a huge profit ,even in the cases that profit of some items may by low price than those of its competitors.

One more key strategy by Walmart has been taking in the 1980's its move to deal directly with manufacturers. This shift in responsibility for inventory management from Walmart to the suppliers, which comprised a vendor-managed inventory system, was said to have formed a soft flow of stock, with less irregularities, and helped ensure that products requested by customers have always been available on the stores. All of this has resulted in a more cost-effective manner, with these savings being translated as well into lower prices in the Walmart stores. Also key to the cost-effectiveness of Walmart's supply chain strategy and distribution network is the positioning of its nearly 160 distribution centers, which cover approximately 120 million square feet and are all within 130 miles of the stores they supply. Regional distribution centers have been placed at locations that offer lower labor and transportation costs. The last two strategies have a littele marked Walmart's image in the public eye, and have of course affected some customers purchasing choices.The question is if consumers' seek for a product that is backed by a reliable process exceed their desire for good prices.

It could be said that consumers with more disposable income are more inclined to make purchasing choices that reflect social responsibility. For other consumers, although, being able to extend a small salary is the goal, and in such instances, Walmart's low-pricing strategy wins. Another questions, Is the size of the middle class, that segment of the Walmart market segment with more disposable income and more willingness to demand conscientious policies, shrinking?

What is clear is that Americans will change their manners to save a bit of money, and Walmart's supply chain mechanism, business model and supplier negotiations bank on this being true.

Walmart aspires to help make choices easier and more transparent for people. They serve hundreds of millions of customers every year, and they advocate for them among suppliers for the kinds of products they want and need. After all the above we can say the Walmart achieve their goals an gets a positive feedback from all over the world and the message of her slogan has been received well.so collaboration with a number of organization and non-profit organization allows her strategy to be in the top.

A focal actor tends to set the network strategy and coordinate its implementation in a hierarchical manner to support its structure and strategic nature. This focal actor is typically recognized by the consumers as responsible for the specific product. The managerial task of the focal actor is to deal with problems of cooperation and coordination.

Risk is always a key concern for supply chain network, with the primary focus on suppliers' financial status, knowledge and skills, followed by health and safety and industry practices. Walmart faced an important challenge, how to incorporate these small producers, including smallholder farmers and women-owned artisan enterprises, into the company's supply chain and to ensure that they provide them a good quality, also encountered an undeveloped market environment. To supply Walmart, these producers needed to overcome deficiencies in communications, transport, and logistics infrastructure, as well as challenges in aggregating supply and a lack of familiarity with the expectations of Walmart's customers. Walmart found that investing in smallholder farmers was costly. For one thing, Walmart needed to ensure it had the internal capability to address the unique challenges of working with smallholder farmers. Additionally, the company and the Foundation saw a need to engage partners that provided training and technical assistance to farmers. Consequently, to help strengthen the smallholder farming sectors overall, the Walmart Foundation and other development agencies worked on programs to enhance the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.

Since the small and medium farmer was located far from walmart they faced the challenge of challenges in transporting fresh products with good quality but larger farmer could pay for refrigerated trucks to overcome this barrier, Walmart demonstrated that, while still challenging, it was possible to source from small and medium farmers that were relatively close to a Walmart store or distribution center. However, the company found that beyond a certain distance, the challenges were often too great.

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