Strategic Management Comparison Between Walmart and Nordstrom

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Nordstrom’s competitive advantages are the quality of its products and consistently high level of customer service. Multichannel strategy is another feature of Nordstrom. Multichannel selling allows the company to use its fulfillment warehouses as well as its inventories on the selling floor to make a sale to far-flung customers (Loeb, 2014). Customer can order anything online and pick up in the store, or return in the store. Even products bought from HauteLook can return to Nordstrom Rack. In fact, while returning products in the store, a lot of them ended up with exchanging. As for its online stores, its ability to connect technology and excellent customer experiences into a unified whole that pushes in the same direction makes for an unrivaled value proposition (Hong, 2015). great user experiences is the first concern. So Nordstrom has been invested a lot in technology which created great user experience as well as helped to integrate its multiple channels.

Long-term Strategies for Growth and Sustainability

Recently, Walmart has been closing some of its less popular stores and adjust its strategy to open more community-based supercenters. As everyone knows, Walmart has a strong competitive advantage in its powerful retail brands, large scale of operation worldwide and low-pricing strategy. On the other hand, it has weakness of being involved in many legal issues, high product recall rate, community relations problem etc. I think Walmart should slow down the speed of expanding and focus more on its weaknesses which help them to maintain a good brand image. After all, a positive brand image is sustainable and hard to compete with by its rivals.

By far, Nordstrom has been generated strong revenue growth on its expansion strategies. However, not like one of its main competitor, Saks Fifth Avenue, who has stores in several countries around the world, Nordstrom has mainly focused on the U.S. market. Since 2014, Nordstrom started reaching out its new market in Canada by opening stores and expand its online retailing presence. I think an opportunities for Nordstrom to grow is to keep targeting new customers and expand more markets around the global. By being a globalized department store, Nordstrom can also offer a much bigger variety of products with its global supply chain.

References

Adams, B. (2013, August 06). Nordstrom’s: Where Service is a Culture, Not a Department. Retrieved from https://27gen.com/2013/08/06/nordstroms-where-service-is-a-culture-not-a-department/

Ark, F. (2010, June 4). Walmart CEO Mike Duke Outlines Strategies for Building the "Next Generation Walmart" Retrieved from http://corporate.walmart.com/_news_/news-archive/2010/06/04/walmart-ceo-mike-duke-outlines-strategies-for-building-the-next-generation-walmart

Ferguson, E. (2015, August 12). Walmart's Vision, Mission, Generic & Intensive Strategies - Panmore Institute. Retrieved from http://panmore.com/walmart-vision-mission-statement-intensive-generic-strategies

Hong, P. (2015, January 20). Nordstrom Delights Consumers with Technology. Retrieved from http://www.momentology.com/4454-nordstrom-delights-consumers-with-technology/

Jurevicius, O. (2013, September 14). Strategic Management Insight. Retrieved from https://www.strategicmanagementinsight.com/mission-statements/walmart-mission-statement.html

Loeb, W. (2014, March 13). Why Nordstrom is Well Positioned for the Future. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2014/03/13/why-nordstrom-is-well-positioned-for-the-future/#69148e535a78

Milnes, H. (2015, August 02). How Walmart.com differentiates from Amazon - Digiday. Retrieved April 29, 2016, from http://digiday.com/brands/walmart-com-differentiates-amazon/