Aligning Strategic Goals: Mission Statements of Amazon and Walmart

Mission Statements Orientation of Amazon

Amazon’s mission statements are a market-oriented one since they want to be the most customer-centric company. Market-oriented approach prioritizes the identification of the needs and desires of consumers and the creation of products and services that satisfy them (Kopp, 2021). This is in line with the mission statement that the company provides a marketplace where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online at the lowest price. The company is willing to dedicate their resource to building a marketplace that is customized to every customer’s need. Thus their business should revolve around their market, to provide what their market wants.

There may be some level of product-oriented, production-oriented, and futuristic approach to the business of Amazon. However, the company’s value-creation process is driven by its customers. While the company is committed to enhancing its product and production process as well as seizing future trends, all of those commitments are also determined by the consumers’ preferences.

Review of Walmart’s Mission Statements’ Change

As a part of the strategic planning process, the development of the mission statement must incorporate the evaluation of the internal and external environment (Principles of Marketing, 2015). We can reverse engineer Walmart’s mission statement to review the situation analysis of the company. The past mission statement is emphasizing the company’s capability, while the current one is emphasizing the value that the company creates.

Previously, Walmart mission statement was:
             “We deliver low prices, every day.”  
It was changed, so currently, the mission is:
            “to save people money so they can live better.”

The past and current mission statement has a similar element, which is delivering low prices, which translates into saving people’s money. This element reflects the company’s strength in providing the lowest price for consumer goods. They must evaluate their internal capability and external landscape to be able to provide an economy of scale operation and minimize costs, to the extent that they feel confident in applying a cost leadership strategy. The main difference is that the past mission statement is product-oriented, while the current one is market-oriented, which is a sign of something that has been learned along the way.

From a business perspective, this mission statement is a strong presence of the company’s purpose. While in a social perspective, people may put the statement under scrutiny and criticism. People may question the commitment of the company to make people live better since to save people money the company could mean that it sacrifices the interest of its workers well being. The question of the quality sacrifice over price may also appear.

Nevertheless, Wal-Mart is still one of the biggest companies that prevail. Even on the darkest day of the Covid-19 Pandemic, the company continues to provide its services to “save money, and live better” every day.

Personal Reflection on Strategic Goals

Based on my empirical experience in establishing a small-medium enterprise, strategic planning for a company doesn’t always work the way it intended to be. It can be because of a weak situation analysis that doesn’t cover a comprehensive view of the internal and external assessment. Too many weak assumptions and poor to no market research may also contribute to the failure of the analysis, while the limited resource is also an excuse.

Reading about a company’s mission statement while also navigating the company to align with it would feel like reading about how to swim. It may cover the theory of how to do it, but the reality of executing it is the main problem. The failure rate for small businesses is typically very high, and in my experience, mediocre strategic planning is the main reason. However, many of my entrepreneur friends also belittle the magnitude of this strategic planning process. They just jump into the water and learn to swim by doing. If they think they are doing the wrong method, they quickly change their way. In a sense, they are not really doing strategic planning, they are doing a continuous strategic evaluation. And some of them succeeded.

One question appears in my mind: which approach is better, doing thorough strategic planning and then sticking consistently to the strategy or making the plan just as necessary and then trying to continuously refine the strategy along the way?

References

Kopp, C. M. (2021, February 27). Understanding Market Orientation. Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-orientation.asp

Principles of Marketing. (2015). [E-book]. University of Minnesota Libraries. https://open.lib.umn.edu/principlesmarketing/

Also read other articles in Marketing Management and Strategic Management