3040MKT - Impact of Social Media Marketing On Consumer Loyalty: Case Study of Walmart

CRITICALLY ANALYSING THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA
MARKETING ON CONSUMER LOYALTY: A CASE STUDY OF
WALMART
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Table of contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Research problem............................................................................................................................3
Research objectives.........................................................................................................................4
Research questions...........................................................................................................................5
Background of the problem.............................................................................................................5
Literature review..............................................................................................................................6
Introduction......................................................................................................................................6
Conceptual framework.....................................................................................................................6
Concept of social media marketing.................................................................................................6
Link between social media marketing and brand loyalty................................................................7
Current issues in the system regarding the use of social media platforms......................................9
Theories based on social media marketing....................................................................................10
Literature gap.................................................................................................................................12
Ethical considerations....................................................................................................................12
Summary........................................................................................................................................13
Reference list.................................................................................................................................14
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Introduction
Social media marketing is more than a trend these days as it is a necessity for organizations to
survive in global market. If the social media marketing is done in proper way, it can garner
enough attention to scale up sales within a few amount of time. Social media platforms help
different companies to channelize their path towards the customers and act as an impeccable way
to create brand as well as product awareness. Brand awareness in turn is central to the process of
creating customer loyalty. Apparently it seems that social media marketing is advantageous for
any organization to gain instant popularity, but there are certain threats too which trends to be
omnipresent simultaneously with advantages. Word of mouth can be both an advantage and
disadvantage as it plays an influential role to motivate or demotivate buying behavior of people.
This study would focus on the impact of social media on customer loyalty. A popular retail
organization namely, Walmart would be considered for this study to determine its social media
marketing strategies and their underlying flaws.
Research problem
Social media marketing strategies need proper use of keywords, acronyms and jargons to attract
enough customers. Companies which are good at creating such practices find social media utterly
advantageous but this platform is extremely sensitive as one small word can alter the thoughts of
people. Walmart also faced some troubles regarding its contents in social media. From 2014 to
2016, this company made series of mistakes by promoting its brand name in a controversial way.
For example, this company promoted its plus size products on social media websites by a caption
“fat girl costumes”, which got immediate negative reaction from customers and this idea of
Walmart fell flat on the grounds of effective social media advertising (bloomberg.com, 2017).
As a result of these attempts, company lost most of its followers on social media sites and also
saw shortage of sales from 2014 to 2016 (forbes.com, 2017).
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Figure 1: Drop in sales rate of Walmart
(Source: forbes.com, 2017)
Main hypothesis of this study is to analyse issues that are made by business firms while
marketing their products in social media platforms and make effective recommendations to avoid
consequences in future.
H1- This study would be able to provide effective recommendations with the help of social
media marketing theories as well as strategies
H0- This study may not be able to determine effective strategies for business firms due to
insufficient information about existing theories.
Research objectives
● To analyse the importance of social media marketing done by Walmart for gaining the
loyalty of customers
● To demonstrate the ways by which such marketing is done for inclining huge customer
base towards Walmart
● To portray the consciousness of Walmart in doing attractive social media marketing so
that purchaser’s decisions can be manipulated
● To recommend useful strategies in order to enhance social media marketing by this
venture
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