In each critique, demonstrate mature analysis, critical thinking, synthesis of all course materials, tact, and insight. For each critique, reference the textbooks, at least 1 biblical integration for each critique, at least 3 journal articles, at least 400 words each critique, and the correlated thread. Opinion is worth little unless it is supported by quotes and/or paraphrases from textbooks and professional journals.
Critique 1
Walmart, Inc. engages in retail and wholesale business. It operates through the following business segments: Walmart U.S., Walmart International, and Sam’s Club (CNN Money, 2018). Walmart provides a variety of different products to consumers. These products include clothing, food, technical devices, jewelry, and much more. There are many other retail companies that Walmart must compete with. To stay competitive, Walmart always implements new strategies. The strategies that Walmart implements are aimed towards how they can be better in the future. These new strategies include the following: (1) Higher wages and the implementation of training programs will benefit employees and provide a better shopping experience for customers, (2) A continued focus on the ecommerce sector will allow Walmart to remain competitive among the online retailers, and (3) New efforts to ease the shopping experience will help bring people who otherwise avoid mega stores (Seeking Alpha, 2015). Customers and employees are the main concerns of Walmart, and they are always trying to find ways to provide beneficial services to both.
Although Walmart implements strategies for the future to stay competitive and successful, they should also implement strategies for the current well-being of the company. A contemporary management technique that Walmart should use is benchmarking. Benchmarking will allow Walmart to identify its critical success factors, study the best practices of other firms for achieving these critical success factors, and then implement improvements in the firm’s processes to match or beat the performance of those competitors (Blocher, Stout, Juras, & Cokins, 2016). To provide better service to customers and their employees, Walmart must identify their current critical success factors and what areas of those factors can be improved or what other critical success factors should be included to have more of a competitive advantage with other companies.
References
Blocher, E., Stout, D. E., Juras, P. E., & Cokins, G. (2016). Cost management: A strategic emphasis. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
CNN Money. (2018). Walmart Inc. Retrieved from CNN Money: https://money.cnn.com/quote/profile/profile.html?symb=WMT
Seeking Alpha. (2015). Wal-Mart Implements New Strategies To Stay Competitive. Retrieved from Seeking Alpha: https://seekingalpha.com/article/3504556-wal-mart-implements-new-strategies-stay-competitive
Response to Critique 1:
The increased competition in the global market has forced the businesses to pay exclusive attention to their customers. And for this reason, the employees give importance, as well as these the ones whose ultimate performance are transferred in the form of a product or service satisfying the key customers. Wal-Mart is the retail store chain which is operated by the American public company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Whatever strategies Wal-Mart adopts, the first and foremost objective is to provide its customers with the best services and products guaranteeing satisfaction under a single roof.
It shows that whatever strategies and tactics a company is using, the main measure for identifying the success of these strategies is the satisfaction level of its customers. The evaluation of customer satisfaction level for Wal-Mart is important to analyze how the adopted strategies are coming off. Wal-Mart, therefore, has set some standards and benchmarks by which its employees have to perform. These include respect for the individual, striving for excellence and service to the customers. Critical success factors are important for the company to not only have knowledge of its performance-dependent variables and to also take complete caution while considering these. Wal-Mart, customer service satisfaction level, can be evaluated regarding the customer service of purchase part (including total quality management, health quality of products, electronic shelf label system), the customer service of after-sales (day guarantee, jump lead services, packing service, space hog service, Braille guns). The research conducted on the evaluation of customer satisfaction level as depicted from its customer service, sales performance, and a number of repetitive customers (Wei & Wei, 2011).
Furthermore, Wal-Mart successfully integrated supply chain is also another factor which has contributed to its dominant position in the industry. However, there is still room for improvement. Research conducted on Wal-Mart supply chain efficiency shows how it can improve its efficiency to gain short term as well as long-term competitive advantage by focusing on adaptability, agility, and alignment of the capabilities and activates (Nguyen, 2017). The competitive advantage of Wal-Mart has been found to be its everyday low-price strategy which pursues cost leadership principles as enabled by its economies of scale (Basker, 2007). The biblical integration would be presented by saying that the management of this company reveals that if follows high ethical standards, serving employees and its customers, being good stewards of the financial resources and fair dealing. Moses had built on Genesis’ call to work and protect humanity by commanding them to deal fairly (Genesis 2:15) (Leone, 2015). All in all, it can be said that Wal-Mart has been successful because of its consideration for customers, partners in the supply chain and employees as critical business success factors yielding results for it.
References
Basker, E. (2007). The Causes and Consequences of Wal-Mart’s Growth. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21 (3), 177-198.
Leone, N. (2015). The Bible Is a Good Business Guide. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/faith-matters/2015/02/20/the-bible-is-a-good-guide-to-best-business-practices
Nguyen, T. T. (2017). Wal-Mart’s successfully integrated supply chain and the necessity of establishing the Triple-A supply chain in the 21st century. Journal of Economics and Management, 29 (3), 102-117.
Wei, Z., & Wei, R. (2011). Performance assessment of customer service strategy in Wal-Mart. Journal of System and Management Sciences, 1 (11), 85-93.
Critique 2
Micron is a company that creates memory products that change how we use information, focusing on DRAM, NAND, NOR, and 3D XPoint memory products (Micron, n.d.). Reading through our textbook, there are multiple contemporary management techniques Micron could use to help achieve its critical success factors. I can see Micron using the following techniques: The Value Chain, Business Intelligence, Target Costing, or Life Cycle Costing. I think that most successful companies will not just target one contemporary management technique, rather, using multiple strategies to continue to remain competitive in our rapidly changing economy. For this discussion board, I will focus on the Target Costing strategy.
Target costing helps determine the cost for a product on the basis of competitive pricing, in such way that the product will earn a profit (Blocher, Stout, Juras, & Cokins, 2016, p 12). Borgernas and Fridh (2003) defined target costing as a product development process, because it considers all factors including market price back to the product design. Target costing also “complies with new market conditions by integrating customer requirements, technical attributes and cost information into the product design phase and reducing the cost of the product by eliminating the non-value-added functions” (Zengin & Ada, 2010, p 5594).
Micron has seen a shift in the DRAM and NAND pricing demand over the past several months, which is now starting to affect their margins and for that reason, shareholders have become leery with their investments. Since Micron is a leader in the industry, other corporations are always trying to cut into their profit and take market share. Micron is investing $3 billion into building and developing a new expansion plan for their Virginia factory (Nellis, 2018). This will allow Micron to create more DRAM and NAND products at a much more cost-effective rate, allowing them to use target costing to keep ahead of their competition. Target costing will enable Micron to manage costs efficiently while adding higher value to their products (Zengin & Ada, 2010). To add Biblical reference to this theme, “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9, English Standard Version). While Micron has competition coming after them, they can continue to invest into the infrastructure of their business to continue to succeed for years to come.
References
Blocher, E. J., Stout, D. E., Juras, P. E., & Cokins, G. (2016). Cost management: A strategic emphasis. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Borgernas, H. and Fridh, G., 2003. The use of target costing in Swedish manufacturing firms, D-thesis in management accounting, [online] Go¨teburg University, School of Economics and Commercial Law, Autumn Term 2003. Available from: http://www.handels.gu.se/epc/archive/ 00003329/01/03-04-3D.pdf [Accessed 30 May 2008].
Micron. (n.d.). About. Retrieved September 28, 2018, from https://www.micron.com/about
Nellis, S. (2018, August 29). Micron Technology plans $3 billion expansion of the Virginia plant. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-micron-tech-virgina/micron-technology-plans-3-billion-expansion-of-virginia-plant-idUSKCN1LE27E
Zengin, Y., & Ada, E. (2010). Cost management through product design: target costing approach. International Journal of Production Research, 48(19), 5593–5611. https://doi-org.ezproxy.liberty.edu/10.1080/00207540903130876
Response to Critique 2:
Micron has a strong track record of innovation for its last 40 years of expertise in-memory technology. The company has been a world leader in its industry, and through its global brands Crucial, Micron and Ballistix, the company has built up a broad portfolio of memory technology products including NAND, DRAM, 3D XPoint and NOR Flash. Micron is helping the world in transforming the way it used information. Its technology aids in innovative enterprise and consumer storage, computing, data centers, automotive, embedded and mobile application. The company trades its stock on NASDAQ.
Target costing is one way through which the production costs can be managed while also promoting quality standards that meet the requirements of customers. It has been found that companies can make better use of the target costing by integrating quality function deployment as well as value engineering techniques to gain a competitive cost advantage (Zengin & Ada, 2010).
Micron has recently announced on its joint development of 3D Xpoint with Intel to develop a completely new non-volatile class of memory which has lower latency and greater endurance as compared to the NAND memory (Micron, 2018). It is another step to move forward regarding gaining competitive advantage for the company products. Studies have shown that companies need to accommodate the shift from traditional value chain management strategies and look for an integrated cost management approach. It has been found that the adoption of the integrated approach for cost management would benefit for long-term targets of the company (Zbib, 2003). Target costing helps in the identification of the problems linked to procurements and aids in close cooperation among the partners in the supply chain. It helps better understanding of the product costs and aids in identifying any potential problems in the earlier cost-reduction process. The process has focused on the end user and its clients and hence gains advantage this way. Furthermore, it also encourages active participation of all employees in the cost analysis, boosting employee motivation. The target is costing aids assurance of real and specific goals consequently helping I achievement of successful financial performance (Briciu & Capusneanu, 2013). In biblical interpretation, it has been evident that serving others is one of the main principles of the Old and New Testament, It has been established by focusing on the importance of taking responsibility of our neighbor and hired workers (Leviticus 19:13) (Leone, 2015).
References
Briciu, S., & Capusneanu, S. (2013). PROS AND CONS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TARGET COSTING METHOD IN ROMANIAN ECONOMIC ENTITIES. Accounting and Management Information Systems, 12 (3), 455-470.
Leone, N. (2015). The Bible Is a Good Business Guide. Retrieved from https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/faith-matters/2015/02/20/the-bible-is-a-good-guide-to-best-business-practices
Micron. (2018, July 16). Micron and Intel Announce Update to 3D XPoint™ Joint Development Program. Retrieved from http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=1072241
Zbib, I. J. (2003). Target Costing: The Key To Supply Chain Excellence. International Business & Economics Research Journal, 2 (11).
Zengin, Y., & Ada, E. (2010). Cost management through product design: target costing approach. International Journal of Production Research, 48 (19), 5593-5611.
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