3 Reasons Why WalMart Changed Their Past and Current Mission Statement

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Let’s compare the Wal-Mart past and current mission statement first,

Past: “We deliver low prices, every day.”

Current: “to save people money, so they can live better.”

As we already know that in a product-oriented approach, the primary concern of an organization is the quality and the price of the product. Their main mission was to provide acceptable products at the lowest cost possible. We can see in the past mission statement, Wal-Mart put its focus on the product (low price) not on the customers whereas in the current mission statement Wal-Mart put its focus on the customers (people).

It shows that currently Wal-Mart now seeks to fulfill its customers’ needs and desires therefore, its current mission statement becomes a market-oriented statement.

Referring to Kotler and Keller (2012): “Goals indicate what a business unit wants to achieve; strategy is a game plan for getting there. Every business must design a strategy for achieving its goals, consisting of a marketing strategy and a compatible technology strategy and sourcing strategy.”

The several possible reasons that might cause Wal-Mart to change its mission statement are:

1. Changes in the main purpose of the organization: Past Wal-Mart’s mission statement shows that the purpose of Wal-Mart was to deliver low price products to their customers. Now, the main purpose of Wal-Mart is to save people money, so they can live better. Changes in the main purposes of the organization might shift the organization’s approach in creating, delivering, communicating, and exchanging their values. Thus changed their mission statement.
2. Changes in the business and marketing strategy: Of course, the changes in the main purpose of the organization will impact the business and marketing strategy too. In the past, Wal-Mart adopted a product-oriented approach, in which they focused on how to provide products at the lowest price possible. So their strategy was mass-selling (or production) to the customers. Nevertheless, at this moment, since they changed their mission statement into market-oriented, the strategy shifted into the customer-centric approach
3. Changes in their business model, especially on the value proposition: In the past, providing low-cost goods was their value proposition. Right now, the value proposition is to help people to live better by providing products with reasonable prices based on their needs.

References:

The five key categories of the marketing orientation approach. (2021, January 31). Traqq’s Blog. https://traqq.com/blog/the-five-key-categories-of-marketing-orientation-approaches/

Principles of Marketing. (2015). University Of Minnesota Libraries Publishing Edition. Minneapolis, USA.

Thirumalai, Sriram & Sinha, Kingshuk. (2005). Customer Satisfaction With Order Fulfillment in Retail Supply Chains: Implications of Product Type in Electronic B2C Transactions. Journal of Operations Management. 23. 291–303. 10.1016/j.jom.2004.10.015.

Note:

This article is written based on University of The People Marketing Management (BUS 5112) written assignment by Fristy Tania in September 2021