Portfolio Activity Unit 1

BUS5112: Marketing Management

Dr. Harsha Lalwani

November 17, 2022

by Dimitra Triantafyllou

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1. Amazon.com Mission statement is “To be Earth’s most customer-centric
company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to
buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

Is this mission statement market-oriented, product-oriented, production-oriented

or futuristic? Why?

Peter Drucker, management’s guru, stated that a mission statement answers the
questions of “What is our business?” Therefore a mission statement is the one that
gives birth to a company’s identity, explains what the company does, and how it
differentiates from its competitors. Opposite to the product-oriented mission
statement, the idea of market orientation concentrates on the needs and desires of the
clientele.

Amazon’s mission statement is a bright example of a market oriented statement, as it

puts the customers at the center of company’s universe. It is stated explicitly in the
statement that Amazon want to be “most customer-centric company” on earth. Their
mission statement includes the purpose of the company (most customer-centric
company), the way they will achieve this mission (to buy online, to offer its customers
the lowest possible prices), their audience (Earth’s inhabitants), and the value they
will provide to their customers (where customers can find and discover anything they
might want). It is a mission statement that reflects owner’s commitment to think
universal and “big” but always taking under consideration human needs. One could
say that it is a mission statement drafted and written “by the book”.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s creator and owner is writing in the company’s site “We started
in a garage, but we’re not there anymore. We are big, we impact the world, and we
are far from perfect. We must be humble and thoughtful about even the secondary
effects of our actions.” Anthropocentric by all means and this is highly reflected to
company’s mission statement.[1]

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2. The purpose of strategic planning is to find ways in which an organization can
best use its strengths to take advantage of opportunities within the environment.

In the past, Wal-Mart mission statement was, “We deliver low prices, every
day.” Currently, Wal-Mart’s corporate mission is “to save people money so they
can live better.”

Using the knowledge from strategic formulation and unit’s reading, provide a
possible reason for review of Wal-Mart’s mission statement.

The value proposition is a crucial step towards shaping a firm’s strategic planning.
Value proposition is integrated in a company’s mission statement. Wal-Mart’s
decision to change the mission statement from a product-oriented to a market-oriented
clearly depicts a new view of their strategic planning.

Walmart Inc. (formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail

corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and
grocery stores.[2] “[The change of name] is just a symbol of how customers are
shopping us today and how they’ll increasingly shop us in the future. Whether it’s in
our stores, on our sites, with our apps, by using their voice or whatever comes next,”
Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, wrote in a blog post. [3]

Walmart took the strategic decision to change their 60 years old product orientation to
an upscale market-oriented mission as they want to compete straightforwardly to their
big avenger Amazon on the area of online orders. They already launched a redesigned
e-shop which displays traditional Walmart’s product categories and new categories to
reach out for electronic products’ aficionados. It seems that Walmart is aiming to
capitalize on the crucial difference between them and Amazon. Ownership of a huge
network of natural shops can call consumers to touch and feel the item they desire and
if they want to purchase at the same time. But Walmart’s customer will also have the
choice to just go online and proceed in purchases.

Undoubtedly this strategic decision taken by the ownership, which remains in the
hands of a single family by 52%, reflects their need and desire to invest in the future
and clearly shows that owners realized that focus should be directed to consumers.

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3. Take a moment and reflect on the topics introduced in this Unit.

 Formulate at least one question that arose while you were reading the
material and completing the assignments.
 Was there anything in this Unit that surprised you or caught your
attention? Explain.

I obtained my first degree, Bachelors in Business Administration, exactly 35 years

ago, in 1987. My major was marketing, a relatively new area of study. I believe in that
time ideas of marketing and customer orientation were already in use, and especially
in the United States was the “hot” topic in management circles of scholars.

Now, in 2022, I realize that even though there was a lot of water that run under the
bridge, still customer or market orientation is under scrutiny and observation. The
American Marketing Association defines Marketing as “the activity, set of
institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging
offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large”. [4]
The wording is different now but the marketing mix and the 4Ps remain untouched
by the years that passed by. Some say that now day we are in the value era and that
companies emphasize on creating value for their clientele. I fail to see how the value
era is different form the marketing era. I find that firms’ desire to focus on their
customers’ needs only added to basic marketing theory ideas such as ethics and social
responsibility, sustainability, circular economy, and service dominant logic. Still these
additions just stress out even more the basic idea of marketing. A human being and
human behavior are the key factors that a company is taking under consideration
when they are designing their strategy or brainstorming regarding a new product to be
introduced in the market.

Aristotle defined a human being as a rational creature with an ability to switch the
rationality on and off. This 2500 years old idea is the base where marketing is
founded in order to search for “offerings” that will cover needs untouched by on and
off switches of rationality.

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References

[1] About Amazon. US About Amazon. (2020, September 17). Retrieved November
18, 2022, from https://www.aboutamazon.com/

[2] Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, November 17). Walmart. Wikipedia. Retrieved

November 17, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart

[3] Gupta, R. (2020, November 20). Why is walmart changing its name? Market
Realist. Retrieved November 17, 2022, from
https://marketrealist.com/2017/12/walmart-changing-name/

[4] University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. (2015). Principles of Marketing.

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