Assignment
- Please answer the following two questions with regards to the case is titled ‘Walmart taps into Silicon Valley expertise'. It requires a report of 1000 words (500 words for each question) refer the case study below.
A) Can you think of any reason (Social/technological market) that led to this shift in competitive strategy?
B) Do you think that the Walmart and Kosmix partnership signals a new and emerging trend for the e-tailing market? Why or Why not?
- The intent of this assignment is for the student to evaluate the role of creativity and innovation, and its impact on organizational knowledge.
- The detailed grade descriptors for this submission are given in Part 5.
- Students are expected to exhibit the following competences:
• Knowledge and understanding of key concepts,
• Analysis and level of argument,
• Extent of reading and references used,
• Structure and presentation of the submission, writing style etc.
Walmart taps into silican valley expertise by Barney Jopson and Richard Waters
Walmart, the world's largest retailer, has swung its bulk into the fast-changing world of social networks by acquiring a small California company that it will use to explore new ways of reaching shoppers digitally.The US retailer said it had agreed to acquire Kosmix, which has developed a platform to filter and organise material from social networking sites to present to individual users. It was founded in 2005.
The move signals that Walmart is joining other multinationals seeking to set up outposts in Silicon Valley in order to tap into engineering talent and new ideas in the exploding social media and mobile internet businesses.The retailer did not disclose how much it had agreed to pay, but a spokesman said the figure was "not material" to its business. Walmart posted global sales of $405bn last year.
Walmart said Kosmix and its founders would operate as part of a newly created group called @WalmartLabs, which will be based in Silicon Valley and develop technologies and businesses for shopping online and with smartphones.
Until now traditional companies have mainly turned to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to help with their marketing, rather than seeing them as standalone business opportunities.But the soaring revenues of Groupon and other group-buying sites on the web have prompted hopes that other new forms of e-commerce will emerge around them.
Kosmix was founded by two online shopping entrepreneurs, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman, whose first company Junglee was acquired in 1998 by Amazon for a reported $250m.Their Kosmix platform powers several websites including TweetBeat, a real-time filter for live events.Stephen Wyss, a retail partner at BDO, an accounting firm, said: "Social media is an innovative way of knowing your customer, knowing what they want, and getting an understanding of what trends are."
Walmart's systems for tracking shoppers' spending are already among the most sophisticated in the retail industry, but experts say retailers' performance will increasingly be differentiated by the depth of their customer knowledge. Eduardo Castro-Wright, Walmart's vice-chairman, said: "We are expanding our capabilities in today's rapidly growing social commerce environment."
Walmart is yet to develop a clear social commerce strategy.