Comparison of Business Strategies of Two Retail Giants: Amazon and Walmart

In Amazon the leadership has played an integral part in making Amazon the largest retailer giants and making it a global name. Under the leadership influence of Jeff Bezos, Amazon has been able to adapt quickly to the changing global markets and diversify their business from online book store to various business sectors globally. One of the main factors that contributed to the success of Amazon is because of the leadership principles of innovation of Amazon that focuses on having long term flexible goals which helps them to adapt to changing global environments. Jeff Bezos strongly sends a clear message to the employees of Amazon that innovation is core part of company’s strategy towards global success and will be regarded as of high value. Various lab facilities are opened by Amazon in different countries that monitor and continuously improve the processes to provide a better experience to the customers (Robishcon, 2017).

The main principles of leadership are designed in the strategies that Amazon adopts for their innovation process. Due to the leadership principles of innovation in Amazon, they have been able to build a strong base for their foundation and this principle are embedded in every single innovation strategies they adopt to provide a better experience to their customers. The main principle leadership that affects the innovation process include Amazon being obsessed with their clients and provide them great experience which will help them to retain and attract new customers. Another important leadership principle for Amazon is that the leaders are treated as owners of the company. The leaders are in a continuous effort in developing long term goals for the company and compromises on short term profitability goals. The most important leadership principle of Amazon is that the leaders provide quality training to the employees and considers it to be an important part of their work culture. Because of this principle, the leaders in amazon have been able to raise the bar for the employees and thus resulting in an innovating culture among the organization (Amazon, 2017).

The present CEO of Walmart Doug McMillon, has been able to re-organise and re-invent all the innovation strategies of Walmart. During his tenure which last more than 20 years, he was able to bring a lot of innovative changes in the whole of the organization which made them a global success. Under the leadership of McMillon, Walmart has been able to get a $21 billion contract in South-Africa and helped Walmart to invest successfully in the business-like men sportswear, entertainment, home apparel, and many other business ventures. Doug McMillon has additionally been a champion for private-check new-born child formula and has been able to sell excess apparel stocks that had been set away in an underground hole. McMillon is a great entrepreneur and under his supervision, Walmart has been able to achieve global heights and extend their global lead over their rivals (O'KEEFE, 2015).

The leadership of innovation in Amazon is completely different from Walmart. The founder of Walmart, Sam Walton had incorporated some of the leadership principles in the foundation of the company and it resulted in a great success for Walmart. The leadership principles that affect innovation in Walmart include the employees and leaders in Walmart to be committed towards the business. This will result in cultivating an innovative culture in the whole organization. The Another important leadership principle that influences the innovations in Walmart is the necessity to encourage the employees so that it motivates them, and it will lead to successful innovations in Walmart. The most important leadership principle that influences the strategies of innovation in Walmart is its philosophy of establishing themselves as a low-cost retailer and to be the lead runner in innovation in the global market. This philosophy would provide them the competitive advantage over their rivals and expand their lead in the global market (Walmart, 2017).

In Amazon, the hierarchical structure of advancement supports the various innovation strategies that are undertaken by them. It also assists Amazon in controlling all the global electronic businesses. Due to a legitimate and corporate development structure of Amazon, it helps them in working up the arrangement and planning of joint efforts among the various employees of the organization. The corporate organizational structure of Amazon determines how the leaders in Amazon will direct and influence the various operational activities in different business ventures. Amazon has been able to establish themselves as online retail giants and as a result they will need to maintain the authoritative and properly designed corporate organizational structure to extend their global lead. A progressing corporate structure could even benefit Amazon as the association incorporates more things and a tiny bit at a time and that would differentiate them from other companies. The organizational structure of Amazon is one of most practical hierarchical structure. The most important and the strongest characteristics of Amazon organizational structure is the Global function-based group. The function of this group is to implement successful web services throughout the whole organization and to implement various new operations in different markets. The second important feature of Amazon’s organizational structure includes the worldwide structure which is a traditional organizational structure for Amazon. Through this feature of worldwide structure, the main motive of Amazon is to gain managerial control of all the departments inside the organization. The third and last feature of Amazon organizational structure includes the different geographic divisions. The main function of this organizational structure is to address and implement successful communication between the various businesses located in different geographic locations (Meyer, 2017).

The amazing growth of Amazon’s development over the recent couple of years isn’t a supernatural occurrence but is the innovative culture that is engraved in the foundation of the company. Under the leadership of Jeff Bezos, amazon has been able to develop an innovative culture that continuously ventures into new business. Amazon is one of only a handful couple of organizations on the planet that upgrades its present business while making a space to build up new pursuits in the meantime. At the time of recessions, when associations reduce in volume and the global market becomes unpredictable, organizations go into a trap of slowness and fails to experiment. Bezos is especially aware of these immense association ailments, and highlights that it's something Amazon will be ready to face off. Bezos needs Amazon to keep up a key separation from a 'one-assess fits-all' culture of essential authority. He complements the hugeness of continually assessing and adjusting Amazon's lifestyle, so it never loses the preparation, nimbleness, and make progress toward experimentation that made the association so fruitful (Guppta, 2016).

Unlike Amazon, the organizational structure of Walmart consists of two main categories which include organizational and function-based definitions. The main function of the organizational structure is to implement effective communication of information flowing from the top most management level to managers and down rank employees in all the retail stores of Amazon. The function-based definition feature of the organizational structure of Walmart deals with various employees working in different departments such as Human Resource, Production department, Marketing etc. The strong foundation laid by Walmart in its organizational structure has given the capability for managers to effectively communicate and run the entire organization. For example, new courses of action and procedures made at Walmart's corporate local station are clearly passed on to from the top levels to the low rank employees. Thusly, effective checking and control are proficient through Walmart's different levelled definitive structure. Regardless, a disadvantage of this definitive structure is that it has less help for various levelled flexibility. The levels lower of the legitimate structure can't without much of a stretch change business practices because of the long trades and endorsement process including the managers and corporate directors at Walmart's headquarters. The innovation culture in the organizational structure of Amazon varies from Walmart’s. The principal variables that are incorporated in Walmart’s innovation culture include great service to customers, lead in innovation, work with commitment and have mutual respect within employees. To extent client benefit, Walmart offers various services to its customers and incorporates them in their working process. Walmart additionally perceives the motivation of each employees to the accomplishment of the business. Walmart also advances towards accomplishment in the execution of individuals, teams, and the entire affiliation. Walmart uplifts the moral values of honesty, fairness, commitment etc and incorporates these variables in their fundamental structure (Lombardo, 2017).

Without a doubt, due to the innovation climate, Amazon and Walmart are the biggest retailer giants. This is mainly due to the direct result of their creative thoughts and to outperform each other at each other's business. The competition between Walmart and amazon is increasingly growing because on one hand Amazon is the biggest global online retailer and on the other hand Walmart is the greatest physical retailer on planet. While Walmart is endeavouring to disassemble Amazon in the digital world, one reason for Amazon to succeed is its incomparable quality to clutch data about client's preferences. The one that can ace the zone of market predominance will win the race (Dotcomweavers, 2017).

The innovation climate prevalent in the organization of Amazon has helped them to establish themselves in the retail world with its consistent inventive thoughts which begins from offering comfort, aggressive estimating, and directly shipping products to customers homes. Although Walmart has entered the business of online retailing, Amazon is not worried about it because the business of Walmart in online retailing constitutes only a small percentage. But Walmart with the purchase of many online retailing companies like jet.com, it has expanded its global worth and made its intention very clear on entering the digital business. Walmart are also endeavouring in making their stores integrated into a well organised structure. Also, quite a bit of it relies on Store No.8 which as per them is a place where various innovative ideas, new strategies, etc are made into existence and later implemented in their business ventures. This shows that Walmart is deliberately making moves to make their presence felt in the digital world (Rossolillo, 2017).

The aggressive processes taken by Walmart in the business market has persistently astounded the global business markets with the buying of mod cloth, shoes.com, Moosejaw which is an e-commerce giant, and the current improvement of Store no. 8 which is developed to attract high end customers. With the goal of being a fast mover in the industry and supporting the various ongoing innovation with the assistance of a Silicon Valley-based hatchery, Wal-Mart starts to construct new companies that will assume full liability to change the course of the retail operations in the following 10 years (Davis-Taylor, 2017).

The needs of the clients cannot be comprehended by another company other than Amazon. They established this status by developing the framework of information science as well as by consummating the hardware to get their prerequisites. Walmart throughout the years has thought of imaginative procedures to prevail in the conventional blocks and-mortar enormous box display continuously. While Amazon is involved with adding to its inventory network and conveyance framework to make it a more responsive retailer, Walmart is attempting to face Amazon in the web business, using its standard retail preferences to content on the market of online retailing (Pratt, 2016).