Innovation

Innovation Innovation is the introduction of new goods and services within a company. This is what helps a lot of companies adapt to changes that are brought on by the customers and the competitors. Therefore it is very important for businesses of every kind to find new and better ways to communicate with their customers and deliver their products. The best organization that I can think of for the sake of this paper is Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is always reducing the prices of their products in order to compete with other companies. Some of their competitors include Target, and Shopko, as well as a few others. Wal-Mart also has to be competitive with stores like Bust Buy, and American, because like these stores, they also sell electronics. Wal-Mart uses the pricing of their products to attract the majority of their customers who are considered low income to medium income families. Their slogan "always low prices" is what is used to help attract the attention to their business from these groups of customers to help make them even more successful in the sight of their competitors. Since Wal-Mart has opened their doors, they have done what they can to make their stores even bigger and better. They have put in a garden center, automotive center, and even a grocery center . So you can do all of your shopping in one store, save time, and save money. In order to make things even more convenient for their customers, Wal-Mart has also built banks into some of the stores, they’ve added bigger pharmacies, they have hair salons, and they even have portrait studios. A lot of these improvements happened as a result of the customers; and Wal-Mart’s response to what they wanted. People were asking for a better shopping experience when they came to the store. Another result of giving the customers a better shopping experience was that Wal-Mart co-branded with the McDonalds franchise to allot their fast food experience there too. Wal-Mart also offers online services. So, as you can tell from the things I have mentioned above, this organization continues to grow and adapt to change. This will allow the company continued growth, as well as sustainability when competing with new competitors. Wal-Mart was one of the first stores up here in Michigan that went green. Going green means that Wal-Mart has listened to their customers. As a result of that listening, they started making bags to help save the lives of trees. They did this by putting in high efficiency refrigeration units, the waste heat from refrigeration units supplies 70% of the hot water in Wal-Mart stores. Another thing that helped in this department was creating a cotton organic baby clothes line, known as George Baby Organic. As a result of this clothing line, Wal-Mart was able to reduce the prices for that clothing line. Yet the biggest go green decision that Wal-Mart has made has been their bio-diesel trucks. The fuel for the sharks are made out of waste brown cooking grease or greenhouse gas emissions (GHG’s) which reduces the waste on air pollution. With such innovations as these, being prepared to address the demands of your customers seems to be a top priority for the Wal-Mart organization. Wal-Mart will also continue to have the competitive edge by offering such things as price matching or advertising matching, which will keep Wal-Mart’s prices lower than most competitors in the retail business. This is very smart business sense, and with business sense like this, Wal-Mart is sure to be a very successful business for a long time to come.   References Walmart. (2012). About Walmart. Retrieved from http://www.walmartstores.com/AboutUs/7606.aspx Walmart. (2012). Facts about Walmart. Retrieved from http://www.walmartstores.com/pressroom/factsheets/