White Paper

On
Wal-Marts Business Environment

Submitted by
Group 3
Sonam Choudhury 16020841086
Shakeel Ali 16020841133
Priyanka Kanojia 16020841209
Ishaan Davar 16020841114
Neelakshi Naik 16020841170
 Summary
As per the case study, in 2004, Walmart Stores proposed to build a new supercenter in
Inglewood, a low-income community near Los Angeles. The proposal was a part of
Walmart's strategy to bring its supercenter format to California. Introduced in the late
1980s, supercenters added a full line of groceries and specialty departments to Walmart's
traditional assortment of general merchandise.
Walmart's planned entry into California caused problems even before the discounter
opened a single supercenter. To compete with Walmart, supermarkets in California cut
grocery workers' health benefits and wages. The unions ordered a strike against the
supermarkets. The labor unrest lasted five months and involved 70,000 workers. In the
meantime, Inglewood's city council rejected Walmart's request to build a supercenter. The
retailer took its expansion plans directly to the voters of Inglewood. With the help of the
California initiative process, Walmart forced a public vote on the proposed 60-acre
development. Will Inglewood's voters reduce the shine of "America's most admired
company?"

Flat structure
Strong and unique culture-cost leadership
Competence in information system
Strengths
Large scales of operations
Wide range of product and services
International operations

Self cannibalization
Involvement in multiple lawsuits
Weakness Behind rivals in online sales
Poorly prepared investment decisions
High employee turnover

Global Expansion Strategy

Strategies to cope
with uncertainty
Decentralization of Operations
Marketing Strategy segmentation, saturation, cost
containment
Centralized information system and integrated logistics
Diversification and portfolio management
Question As an advisor to Walmart Board of Directors, do you support the
company plan to use California plan or initiatives.
As a group we support the California Initiative. Before putting forward the reasons as to why
we support the initiative, we would like to take a brief view about California Environmental
Quality Act.
California Environmental Quality Act
As per Wikipedia source the law is stated as The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)
is a California statute passed in 1970, shortly after the United States federal government
passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), to institute a state-wide policy of
environmental protection. CEQA does not directly regulate land uses, but instead requires
state and local agencies within California to follow a protocol of analysis and public disclosure
of environmental impacts of proposed projects and, in a departure from NEPA, adopt all
feasible measures to mitigate those impacts. CEQA makes environmental protection a
mandatory part of every California state and local or public agency's decision making process.
It has also become the basis for numerous lawsuits concerning public and private projects.
The law requires that state and local agencies should review and mitigate the traffic and
environmental impacts of development projects taking place in California. If Walmart goes
through this law, then it will have to submit a project detailing the environmental and traffic
impacts after the development of Walmart in California.
But Walmart found a loophole regarding this law that Once it switches to a ballot initiative,
the law doesn't apply.
So the above being one of the reason to support California Initiative, below are some more
reasons as to why we as a group support it:

This strategy can help them to speed the development process and can boost
employment and tax revenue as well as low price shopping.
The strategy was an opportunity allowing voters to show their support for the benefits
that Walmart would bring their community, jobs, groceries at affordable price,
increased tax revenue and infrastructure improvements.
The ballot process will shield the establishment from lawsuit under the California
Environmental Quality Act.
Moreover, there was surety of peoples support. Voters approved 99 of the 290
Southern California households could expect to save 600$ annually if they shopped at
Walmart.
Measures put before them. If more than 10% of voters signed a local initiative petition,
the city council had the option of directly adopting the proposed ordinance.