1.Walmart is an American multinational organization involved in retail business. It has a chain of hypermarket all across the globe. Basically it has its grocery stores and departmental stores. Walmart is the second largest public corporation of the world (Madura, 2018). It was started in 1962 by Sam Walton. Walmart also comes under the list of Fortune 500 companies in 2018. It is also known as world largest private employees as it has provided private jobs to so many people. At present, there are 2.2 million employees associated with Walmart. This company has also been listed on New York stock exchange. Walmart becomes a very big brand name because of providing valuable services to the customers and a level of comfort too. The vision statement of Walmart is ‘to be the best retailer in the minds and hearts of consumers and employees’ and mission statement is ‘to become the destination for customers to save money so that they can utilize the same for better future’.
The market orientation of Walmart is different as other organization focuses on production and marketing activities of its own products whereas Walmart focus on selling and marketing of other company’s product. Walmart has ‘maintenance’ stage of market orientation because a good market orientation is already created in case of ‘Walmart’ and it has to work only in maintaining the same and safeguard it from any deterioration in marketing approach. Walmart is a supermarket and it sells products of different brands at a same place to provide a better experience to the customers. There are different items like soaps, eatables; hygiene products and many other things. The brand name of ‘Walmart’ is so famous and known by everyone (Kamatchi Subbiah Sukumaran, Chandrasekaran Sivasundaram Anushan and Alamelu and Sampath Thiyagarajan, 2015). It has created an amazing brand value in the market. Brand plays an important role in creation of marketing strategy because there are different objectives of marketing and that directly related with the brand image.
2.Walmart’s marketing mix refers to analysis of 5 C’s-
Consumer- It means to modify the sales as per the preference of buyer. It basically suggests that a business should move the focus from what it wants to sell to what customer wants to buy. This helps in increasing customer satisfaction and attracts other customers too. Such changes make a firm to conduct the business in a different way that provides benefit to the society. Walmart always tries to provide all the services to the customer at one place as they spend their most of the time on internet. It provides different variety of products, customized functionality and convenient purchase and delivery options.
Competitors- Walmart always tried to provide lowest price of the products to the customers. Walmart started its retail business online. Walmart is trying to grab more market share with low cost strategy that makes it different from the other competitors. There are many strong competitors but Walmart sustained on a strong position because of its mission and vision (Campling, 2008).
Collaborators- Walmart has a strong supply chain management. It has maintained good terms with the suppliers. Walmart has also started its retail operations online and it is the era of internet and mobile technologies. ‘Place’ factor in four ‘P’s became irrelevant because everything is available online and buyers can easily get them delivered to their convenient location. Customers can now easily compare the products and get the knowledge about the same before buying. Walmart started online business but it has not stopped opening retail outlets.
Company- Walmart is a very much customer focused company as it always wants to provide low cost products to the customers and give them proper satisfaction. It has a very good brand image in the market. According to Walmart, Marketing is considered as a support function. It started ‘Save money, life better’ campaign and it became the turning point for Walmart and the customers. Walmart always focus on the requirements and feedbacks of the customers and communicate with them for better understanding (Wang, 2015).
Climate- Walmart changes the stock of its retail outlets as per the customer’s choices and preferences. It provides a very good and healthy environment for its workers. Walmart adopts the latest technology for being the best in the industry.
Strengths
Company is serving to the customers who want a convenience in shopping. Basically the target segment is the families who want to shop different products of different brands at a same location. All the sales people are trained to behave in a good way with the customers and help them in providing each kind of help they want. There are suppliers and distributors of different brands that supplies products to all the stores of Walmart. Its sully chain is very strong and it is considered as an advantage for Walmart. There are many strong competitors of Walmart like Ikea, Amazon, Home Depot and Costco. Some political, socio cultural and legal factors impacts the organization. There are various tax law reforms that lead in changes in policies of the organization. Every country has its political factors like giving high wages to the workers so these factors also change the cost management of Walmart.
3.Walmart uses big data to do proper analysis of marketing strategies and strategic decision making. It gets data with the help of market intelligence and market research. Walmart has conducted different surveys also to know the feedback and reviews of the customers. Walmart is totally focused on providing a high satisfactory experience to the customers. So, it is better to get reviews from the customers and make changes according to the same. Walmart also gets data from Big Data as many companies utilize the big data to make strategies for the organization. Walmart also uses big data at different places like-
Walmart always tries to find out the preferences, feedbacks and reviews of the customers as it helps in providing better services. It has adopted practices like get the feedback forms filled by the customers online or at the time of billing. This is convenient for the customers too. The collection of information also helps in finding out the tough competition in the market. It enables an organization to collaborate with the suppliers in an effective way and make the business updated as per the changes (Theories of Labour Market Segmentation, 2012).
4.Target market is a particular segment of the customers on which an organization can rely to sale its products. An organization starts for earn some revenues and it is the main motive of any organization. For earning revenues, there should be sale of product and service at a profit. There’s a pre-defined target market in the marketing strategy (Mohammad Arabzad an, 2012). There are five variable factors that has been discussed earlier- product, price, place and promotion, by these factors only a market can be determined. Initially Walmart has a strategy to grab more customers by providing goods at low profit margins. This strategy became successful because it appeared so attracting for middle class and poor in the society. It should also target the upper middle class people by providing some lavish brands so that they can get the higher market segment. It also helps them in expanding the business (Friedmann, 2009).
So for every company, the target market segment is the group of potential customers who can buy the products or services. It is important to fulfill the needs of the customers in present era. Companies always try to know the requirement of the customers and fulfill the same but there is a difference between knowing the requirement and fulfilling the same. The main motive of Walmart’s is to save the customer’s money and get them best offers and discounts on all the products. Walmart understood the requirements and issues of lower and middle class people and tried to meet their requirements. It resulted in popularity of Walmart I whole United States. Walmart opened stores in each and every city. There was a huge population in US that belongs to poor and middle class so this made Walmart performed so well even after strong competition in the market. It helped Walmart to gain a higher market share (Ahmad Dalalah, 2014).
The value proposition for the target market was “Being a low cost operator”. Walmart always focused on providing high value products in low prices to the customers. As its target market is lower and middle class people, it always considered to make customers satisfy. Walmart has faced the competition as there are many strong competitions but still it has maintained its value proposition. Walmart believes in ‘Expect more and pay less’. It means that customers can expect the highest quality products and services without paying a higher amount (Baines, 2011). It provides an outstanding experience to the customers without charging a high amount. Customer plays a very important role for Walmart. Walmart targets lower and middle class target segment and due to this half of its retail sales occur. Because of this strategy, people trust the brand a lot because the main motive of Walmart is to provide a good customer experience. Even after being a ‘low cost operator”, Walmart should also start keeping products for higher class market segment. It can also jump into some other segments of the markets for expanding business or it can launch its own brand (Lefebvre, 2004).
Walmart’s positioning strategy plays a very important role in the success of the organization. According to Walmart, it is an organization that is totally customer focused and is providing products at the lowest prices. The business model of Walmart is according to its positioning statement only. It uses the pricing factor to maintain the sustainability in the business model. Many competitors came with handsome offers and discounts after the start of Walmart but it has faced the competition and destroyed many retailers because of the way it operates (Etzel, Stanton and Walker, 2007). An organization’s positioning statement is important because it actually shows the main motive and strategies of an organization. Sone organization only focuses on profit motive and they compromise in the quality of products or services but Walmart only give importance to the customers and they are always on the priority. It is a low cost leader and it has been proved in the recent Walmart’s drive for expanding the product and services markets. There are some other products that are available in the market on extreme higher prices but Walmart provides it in an affordable price (Gaber, 2011). It already has a positioning strategy and it is good to maintain the same but for expanding the business it can bring some new ideas that can also create a little different image in other class of customers (Phadermrod, Crowder and Wills, 2016).
5.The new marketing tactics for Walmart
Products- As it was mentioned, Walmart is involved in the retail business of different goods. It has big retail stores that are mainly focused on lower and middle class people. The concept of Walmart is attractive enough but for the growth and marketing strategies it should expand the business. Accordingly it can expand the business by launching its own brand so that it can make a high visibility in the market. Walmart can launch a wide range of different products that possess a very good quality and not very expensive.
Price- Walmart has its low price strategy that has been created by focusing lower and middle class people. This gives a disadvantage to Walmart as it cannot target the higher market segment. For the same, Walmart should start selling some luxury products so that the higher class people can also visits the store. It can easily increase the market share of Walmart. It can basically maintain the lower price of existing products and provide some additional stock to the stores for targeting higher class. Some people thinks that higher the price of the product, higher their quality. So, Walmart can simply start selling the high price or luxury products (Srivastava, 2012).
Place- Walmart has its operations all across the globe. It is a much known brand because of its main motive and mission statement. Walmart has opened its stores even at small locations because it wants to supply the goods to the lower and middle class people at each and every location. Walmart can also start its internet selling on a higher level. It helps in facing the high competition in the market. This can be proved as a very good marketing strategy for the organization. People nowadays prefers online selling a lot as it is a more convenient way for them to shop anytime. Walmart can create a very good position in the market by starting this practice (Mannings, 2008).
Promotion- Walmart has adopted different promotion practices by publishing the advertisements on newspapers and websites but there are some other methods too for carrying on the promotional activities. Walmart can also start its advertisements on television and can focus more on personal selling. It has been adopted by Walmart that it suggests the products to the customers according to their preferences only. Walmart focuses on the lower and middle class segment and that is the main target segment of it so it can start creating efforts to attract some other class of customers.
People- People refers to the human resources involved or associated with the organization. ‘Walmart’ cares a lot about its customers as well as employees. It always tries to understand the sentiments and feeling of the employees and five them very much flexibility. So, Walmart is basically associated with its customers, suppliers and employees. It was discussed that it has a very strong supply chain because Walmart has maintained a strong relationship with the customers (Masuch, 2012).
Process- Process refers to the process of production or providing goods and services to the customer. Walmart has maintained special arrangement for the timings when there is a high customer footfall in the stores so that customer can get convenience and they can become free as soon as possible. There are big queues on the billing counters so Walmart has started some other counters to provide good services to the customers.
Physical evidence- Walmart has its logo on all the bills as well as on advertisement. People buy products of different brands but they considered “Walmart’ as a brand name. Walmart can also start providing some goodies with the name of Walmart and if it starts its own brand or line of business then automatically it can create physical evidence for the organization.
References
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