Case Study Description of Walmart: Love, Earth (B)
This case is about Walmart's launch of Love, Earth-a one billion dollar line of sustainable jewellery-told from the perspective of an NGO activist. Perhaps uniquely among CSR cases to date, it offers instructors the opportunity to explore strategic CSR by a large MNC from the perspective of the firm and the NGO activists.
Swot Analysis of "Walmart: Love, Earth (B)" written by Robert Crawford, N. Craig Smith includes – strengths weakness that are internal strategic factors of the organization, and opportunities and threats that Love Earth facing as an external strategic factors. Some of the topics covered in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) case study are - Strategic Management Strategies, Sustainability and Leadership & Managing People.
Some of the macro environment factors that can be used to understand the Walmart: Love, Earth (B) casestudy better are - – there is increasing trade war between United States & China, increasing energy prices, banking and financial system is disrupted by Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, wage bills are increasing, digital marketing is dominated by two big players Facebook and Google, central banks are concerned over increasing inflation, cloud computing is disrupting traditional business models,
challanges to central banks by blockchain based private currencies, increasing government debt because of Covid-19 spendings, etc
Introduction to SWOT Analysis of Walmart: Love, Earth (B)
SWOT stands for an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats . At Oak Spring University , we believe that protagonist in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) case study can use SWOT analysis as a strategic management tool to assess the current internal strengths and weaknesses of the Love Earth, and to figure out the opportunities and threats in the macro environment – technological, environmental, political, economic, social, demographic, etc in which Love Earth operates in.
According to Harvard Business Review, 75% of the managers use SWOT analysis for various purposes such as – evaluating current scenario, strategic planning, new venture feasibility, personal growth goals, new market entry, Go To market strategies, portfolio management and strategic trade-off assessment, organizational restructuring, etc.
SWOT Objectives / Importance of SWOT Analysis and SWOT Matrix
SWOT analysis of Walmart: Love, Earth (B) can be done for the following purposes –
1. Strategic planning using facts provided in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) case study
2. Improving business portfolio management of Love Earth
3. Assessing feasibility of the new initiative in Leadership & Managing People field.
4. Making a Leadership & Managing People topic specific business decision
5. Set goals for the organization
6. Organizational restructuring of Love Earth
Strengths Walmart: Love, Earth (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Strengths in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The strengths of Love Earth in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Harvard Business Review case study are -
Digital Transformation in Leadership & Managing People segment
- digital transformation varies from industry to industry. For Love Earth digital transformation journey comprises differing goals based on market maturity, customer technology acceptance, and organizational culture. Love Earth has successfully integrated the four key components of digital transformation – digital integration in processes, digital integration in marketing and customer relationship management, digital integration into the value chain, and using technology to explore new products and market opportunities.
Innovation driven organization
– Love Earth is one of the most innovative firm in sector. Manager in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Harvard Business Review case study can use Clayton Christensen Disruptive Innovation strategies to further increase the scale of innovtions in the organization.
Highly skilled collaborators
– Love Earth has highly efficient outsourcing and offshoring strategy. It has resulted in greater operational flexibility and bringing down the costs in highly price sensitive segment. Secondly the value chain collaborators of the firm in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) HBR case study have helped the firm to develop new products and bring them quickly to the marketplace.
Training and development
– Love Earth has one of the best training and development program in the industry. The effectiveness of the training programs can be measured in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Harvard Business Review case study by analyzing – employees retention, in-house promotion, loyalty, new venture initiation, lack of conflict, and high level of both employees and customer engagement.
Successful track record of launching new products
– Love Earth has launched numerous new products in last few years, keeping in mind evolving customer preferences and competitive pressures. Love Earth has effective processes in place that helps in exploring new product needs, doing quick pilot testing, and then launching the products quickly using its extensive distribution network.
Ability to recruit top talent
– Love Earth is one of the leading recruiters in the industry. Managers in the Walmart: Love, Earth (B) are in a position to attract the best talent available. The firm has a robust talent identification program that helps in identifying the brightest.
Organizational Resilience of Love Earth
– The covid-19 pandemic has put organizational resilience at the centre of everthing that Love Earth does. Organizational resilience comprises - Financial Resilience, Operational Resilience, Technological Resilience, Organizational Resilience, Business Model Resilience, and Reputation Resilience.
Sustainable margins compare to other players in Leadership & Managing People industry
– Walmart: Love, Earth (B) firm has clearly differentiated products in the market place. This has enabled Love Earth to fetch slight price premium compare to the competitors in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The sustainable margins have also helped Love Earth to invest into research and development (R&D) and innovation.
Analytics focus
– Love Earth is putting a lot of focus on utilizing the power of analytics in business decision making. This has put it among the leading players in the industry. The technology infrastructure suggested by Robert Crawford, N. Craig Smith can also help it to harness the power of analytics for – marketing optimization, demand forecasting, customer relationship management, inventory management, information sharing across the value chain etc.
Learning organization
- Love Earth is a learning organization. It has inculcated three key characters of learning organization in its processes and operations – exploration, creativity, and expansiveness. The work place at Love Earth is open place that encourages instructiveness, ideation, open minded discussions, and creativity. Employees and leaders in Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Harvard Business Review case study emphasize – knowledge, initiative, and innovation.
High brand equity
– Love Earth has strong brand awareness and brand recognition among both - the exiting customers and potential new customers. Strong brand equity has enabled Love Earth to keep acquiring new customers and building profitable relationship with both the new and loyal customers.
Operational resilience
– The operational resilience strategy in the Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Harvard Business Review case study comprises – understanding the underlying the factors in the industry, building diversified operations across different geographies so that disruption in one part of the world doesn’t impact the overall performance of the firm, and integrating the various business operations and processes through its digital transformation drive.
Weaknesses Walmart: Love, Earth (B) | Internal Strategic Factors
What are Weaknesses in SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The weaknesses of Walmart: Love, Earth (B) are -
Capital Spending Reduction
– Even during the low interest decade, Love Earth has not been able to do capital spending to the tune of the competition. This has resulted into fewer innovations and company facing stiff competition from both existing competitors and new entrants who are disrupting the industry using digital technology.
High dependence on existing supply chain
– The disruption in the global supply chains because of the Covid-19 pandemic and blockage of the Suez Canal illustrated the fragile nature of Love Earth supply chain. Even after few cautionary changes mentioned in the HBR case study - Walmart: Love, Earth (B), it is still heavily dependent upon the existing supply chain. The existing supply chain though brings in cost efficiencies but it has left Love Earth vulnerable to further global disruptions in South East Asia.
Aligning sales with marketing
– It come across in the case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) that the firm needs to have more collaboration between its sales team and marketing team. Sales professionals in the industry have deep experience in developing customer relationships. Marketing department in the case Walmart: Love, Earth (B) can leverage the sales team experience to cultivate customer relationships as Love Earth is planning to shift buying processes online.
Need for greater diversity
– Love Earth has taken concrete steps on diversity, equity, and inclusion. But the efforts so far has resulted in limited success. It needs to expand the recruitment and selection process to hire more people from the minorities and underprivileged background.
Lack of clear differentiation of Love Earth products
– To increase the profitability and margins on the products, Love Earth needs to provide more differentiated products than what it is currently offering in the marketplace.
Skills based hiring
– The stress on hiring functional specialists at Love Earth has created an environment where the organization is dominated by functional specialists rather than management generalist. This has resulted into product oriented approach rather than marketing oriented approach or consumers oriented approach.
High operating costs
– Compare to the competitors, firm in the HBR case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) has high operating costs in the. This can be harder to sustain given the new emerging competition from nimble players who are using technology to attract Love Earth 's lucrative customers.
No frontier risks strategy
– After analyzing the HBR case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B), it seems that company is thinking about the frontier risks that can impact Leadership & Managing People strategy. But it has very little resources allocation to manage the risks emerging from events such as natural disasters, climate change, melting of permafrost, tacking the rise of artificial intelligence, opportunities and threats emerging from commercialization of space etc.
High dependence on star products
– The top 2 products and services of the firm as mentioned in the Walmart: Love, Earth (B) HBR case study still accounts for major business revenue. This dependence on star products in has resulted into insufficient focus on developing new products, even though Love Earth has relatively successful track record of launching new products.
Increasing silos among functional specialists
– The organizational structure of Love Earth is dominated by functional specialists. It is not different from other players in the Leadership & Managing People segment. Love Earth needs to de-silo the office environment to harness the true potential of its workforce. Secondly the de-silo will also help Love Earth to focus more on services rather than just following the product oriented approach.
Slow to strategic competitive environment developments
– As Walmart: Love, Earth (B) HBR case study mentions - Love Earth takes time to assess the upcoming competitions. This has led to missing out on atleast 2-3 big opportunities in the industry in last five years.
Opportunities Walmart: Love, Earth (B) | External Strategic Factors
What are Opportunities in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The opportunities highlighted in the Harvard Business Review case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) are -
Redefining models of collaboration and team work
– As explained in the weaknesses section, Love Earth is facing challenges because of the dominance of functional experts in the organization. Walmart: Love, Earth (B) case study suggests that firm can utilize new technology to build more coordinated teams and streamline operations and communications using tools such as CAD, Zoom, etc.
Harnessing reconfiguration of the global supply chains
– As the trade war between US and China heats up in the coming years, Love Earth can build a diversified supply chain model across various countries in - South East Asia, India, and other parts of the world. This reconfiguration of global supply chain can help, as suggested in case study, Walmart: Love, Earth (B), to buy more products closer to the markets, and it can leverage its size and influence to get better deal from the local markets.
Changes in consumer behavior post Covid-19
– Consumer behavior has changed in the Leadership & Managing People industry because of Covid-19 restrictions. Some of this behavior will stay once things get back to normal. Love Earth can take advantage of these changes in consumer behavior to build a far more efficient business model. For example consumer regular ordering of products can reduce both last mile delivery costs and market penetration costs. Love Earth can further use this consumer data to build better customer loyalty, provide better products and service collection, and improve the value proposition in inflationary times.
Increase in government spending
– As the United States and other governments are increasing social spending and infrastructure spending to build economies post Covid-19, Love Earth can use these opportunities to build new business models that can help the communities that Love Earth operates in. Secondly it can use opportunities from government spending in Leadership & Managing People sector.
Identify volunteer opportunities
– Covid-19 has impacted working population in two ways – it has led to people soul searching about their professional choices, resulting in mass resignation. Secondly it has encouraged people to do things that they are passionate about. This has opened opportunities for businesses to build volunteer oriented socially driven projects. Love Earth can explore opportunities that can attract volunteers and are consistent with its mission and vision.
Learning at scale
– Online learning technologies has now opened space for Love Earth to conduct training and development for its employees across the world. This will result in not only reducing the cost of training but also help employees in different part of the world to integrate with the headquarter work culture, ethos, and standards.
Low interest rates
– Even though inflation is raising its head in most developed economies, Love Earth can still utilize the low interest rates to borrow money for capital investment. Secondly it can also use the increase of government spending in infrastructure projects to get new business.
Lowering marketing communication costs
– 5G expansion will open new opportunities for Love Earth in the field of marketing communication. It will bring down the cost of doing business, provide technology platform to build new products in the Leadership & Managing People segment, and it will provide faster access to the consumers.
Reconfiguring business model
– The expansion of digital payment system, the bringing down of international transactions costs using Bitcoin and other blockchain based currencies, etc can help Love Earth to reconfigure its entire business model. For example it can used blockchain based technologies to reduce piracy of its products in the big markets such as China. Secondly it can use the popularity of e-commerce in various developing markets to build a Direct to Customer business model rather than the current Channel Heavy distribution network.
Better consumer reach
– The expansion of the 5G network will help Love Earth to increase its market reach. Love Earth will be able to reach out to new customers. Secondly 5G will also provide technology framework to build new tools and products that can help more immersive consumer experience and faster consumer journey.
Manufacturing automation
– Love Earth can use the latest technology developments to improve its manufacturing and designing process in Leadership & Managing People segment. It can use CAD and 3D printing to build a quick prototype and pilot testing products. It can leverage automation using machine learning and artificial intelligence to do faster production at lowers costs, and it can leverage the growth in satellite and tracking technologies to improve inventory management, transportation, and shipping.
Reforming the budgeting process
- By establishing new metrics that will be used to evaluate both existing and potential projects Love Earth can not only reduce the costs of the project but also help it in integrating the projects with other processes within the organization.
Building a culture of innovation
– managers at Love Earth can make experimentation a productive activity and build a culture of innovation using approaches such as – mining transaction data, A/B testing of websites and selling platforms, engaging potential customers over various needs, and building on small ideas in the Leadership & Managing People segment.
Threats Walmart: Love, Earth (B) External Strategic Factors
What are Threats in the SWOT Analysis / TOWS Matrix / Weighted SWOT Analysis
The threats mentioned in the HBR case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) are -
Trade war between China and United States
– The trade war between two of the biggest economies can hugely impact the opportunities for Love Earth in the Leadership & Managing People industry. The Leadership & Managing People industry is already at various protected from local competition in China, with the rise of trade war the protection levels may go up. This presents a clear threat of current business model in Chinese market.
Shortening product life cycle
– it is one of the major threat that Love Earth is facing in Leadership & Managing People sector. It can lead to higher research and development costs, higher marketing expenses, lower customer loyalty, etc.
High dependence on third party suppliers
– Love Earth high dependence on third party suppliers can disrupt its processes and delivery mechanism. For example -the current troubles of car makers because of chip shortage is because the chip companies started producing chips for electronic companies rather than car manufacturers.
Barriers of entry lowering
– As technology is more democratized, the barriers to entry in the industry are lowering. It can presents Love Earth with greater competitive threats in the near to medium future. Secondly it will also put downward pressure on pricing throughout the sector.
Increasing wage structure of Love Earth
– Post Covid-19 there is a sharp increase in the wages especially in the jobs that require interaction with people. The increasing wages can put downward pressure on the margins of Love Earth.
Consumer confidence and its impact on Love Earth demand
– There is a high probability of declining consumer confidence, given – high inflammation rate, rise of gig economy, lower job stability, increasing cost of living, higher interest rates, and aging demography. All the factors contribute to people saving higher rate of their income, resulting in lower consumer demand in the industry and other sectors.
Regulatory challenges
– Love Earth needs to prepare for regulatory challenges as consumer protection groups and other pressure groups are vigorously advocating for more regulations on big business - to reduce inequality, to create a level playing field, to product data privacy and consumer privacy, to reduce the influence of big money on democratic institutions, etc. This can lead to significant changes in the Leadership & Managing People industry regulations.
Technology acceleration in Forth Industrial Revolution
– Love Earth has witnessed rapid integration of technology during Covid-19 in the Leadership & Managing People industry. As one of the leading players in the industry, Love Earth needs to keep up with the evolution of technology in the Leadership & Managing People sector. According to Mckinsey study top managers believe that the adoption of technology in operations, communications is 20-25 times faster than what they planned in the beginning of 2019.
Instability in the European markets
– European Union markets are facing three big challenges post Covid – expanded balance sheets, Brexit related business disruption, and aggressive Russia looking to distract the existing security mechanism. Love Earth will face different problems in different parts of Europe. For example it will face inflationary pressures in UK, France, and Germany, balance sheet expansion and demand challenges in Southern European countries, and geopolitical instability in the Eastern Europe.
Backlash against dominant players
– US Congress and other legislative arms of the government are getting tough on big business especially technology companies. The digital arm of Love Earth business can come under increasing regulations regarding data privacy, data security, etc.
New competition
– After the dotcom bust of 2001, financial crisis of 2008-09, the business formation in US economy had declined. But in 2020 alone, there are more than 1.5 million new business applications in United States. This can lead to greater competition for Love Earth in the Leadership & Managing People sector and impact the bottomline of the organization.
High level of anxiety and lack of motivation
– the Great Resignation in United States is the sign of broader dissatisfaction among the workforce in United States. Love Earth needs to understand the core reasons impacting the Leadership & Managing People industry. This will help it in building a better workplace.
Stagnating economy with rate increase
– Love Earth can face lack of demand in the market place because of Fed actions to reduce inflation. This can lead to sluggish growth in the economy, lower demands, lower investments, higher borrowing costs, and consolidation in the field.
Weighted SWOT Analysis of Walmart: Love, Earth (B) Template, Example
Not all factors mentioned under the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants in the SWOT Analysis are equal. Managers in the HBR case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) needs to zero down on the relative importance of each factor mentioned in the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats quadrants.
We can provide the relative importance to each factor by assigning relative weights. Weighted SWOT analysis process is a three stage process –
First stage for doing weighted SWOT analysis of the case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) is to rank the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. This will help you to assess the most important strengths and weaknesses of the firm and which one of the strengths and weaknesses mentioned in the initial lists are marginal and can be left out.
Second stage for conducting weighted SWOT analysis of the Harvard case study Walmart: Love, Earth (B) is to give probabilities to the external strategic factors thus better understanding the opportunities and threats arising out of macro environment changes and developments.
Third stage of constructing weighted SWOT analysis of Walmart: Love, Earth (B) is to provide strategic recommendations includes – joining likelihood of external strategic factors such as opportunities and threats to the internal strategic factors – strengths and weaknesses. You should start with external factors as they will provide the direction of the overall industry. Secondly by joining probabilities with internal strategic factors can help the company not only strategic fit but also the most probably strategic trade-off that Love Earth needs to make to build a sustainable competitive advantage.
