Marketing and Management: Analysis of Walmart's Marketing Mix and Target Market

This article analyzes Walmart's marketing mix and target market. It discusses the use of big data in marketing strategies and suggests new marketing tactics for Walmart. The article also includes a SWOT analysis of Walmart and its market orientation.

Marketing and management

Contents
Issue 1..........................................................................................................................................................3
Issue 2..........................................................................................................................................................4
Walmart’s marketing mix refers to analysis of 5 C’s................................................................................4
SWOT analysis-........................................................................................................................................5
Issue 3..........................................................................................................................................................6
Issue 4..........................................................................................................................................................7
Issue 5..........................................................................................................................................................9

Issue 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.

Issue 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.

SWOT analysis-
Strengths-
 Walmart is a huge retail store all across the globe.
 It has a global supply chain management (Campling, 2008).
 Its supply chain is very efficient.
 Technologically advanced
Weaknesses-
 It has small profit margins that create an impact on cost leadership strategy.
 Walmart has an easy business model that can be easily copied by anyone (Doan and Reeves,
2017).
Opportunities-
 Walmart can expand its operations in developing countries.
 It can create improvements in the human resource practices.
 There are some quality standards that can be improved on Walmart’s part.
Threats-
 There are many strong competitors of Walmart.
 Some products are not good for health that is available in Walmart stores. It harms the brand
image.
 It has a small scale online selling business.
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.
Issue 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-
1. To make pharmacies of Walmart more efficient- Walmart uses simulation techniques to know
about the prescriptions that are filled in a day and which is the busiest time in the whole day. It
helps the staff to manage things in an efficient way in peak hours. Every customer wants to get
free as soon as possible from the billing process so better management at peak hours enables
the same (Wang, 2015).
2. Improvement in store checkout- Walmart utilize Big data to improve check out facilities as
there are peak hours in a whole day where there are so many customers at a single time.
Walmart can introduce self- checkout and facilitated checkout in some situations so that they
will not waste the time of the customers (Quero and Ventura, 2018).
3. Management of supply chain- In the management of supply chain, Walmart traces the number
of steps from the dock to the store. It basically helps the company in finding out the shortest
and the best route. The Big data also help the company for the analysis of transportation and
the movement of trucks. It helps in lowering down the transportation cost of the company.
Sometimes due to the wrong route, the cost of transportation gets higher so this is how
Walmart easily reduces the transportation cost. The information can also be acquired through
surveys.
4. To optimize product assortment- It is important to analyze the choice, needs, shopping patterns
and preferences of customers. Walmart makes decisions on the availability of stock in display in
the store. Big data helps in identifying the same. It also helps in making decision regarding

discontinuing the product and the brands that needs to carry. Customers attracts towards an
outlet if they get the products they want in an easy manner (McGee, 2018).
5. Personalize shopping experience- With the help of big data, Walmart can easily analyze the
preferences of the customers and they can provide a good shopping experience to them. For
example, if a person wants to do shopping for baby products then he starts receiving baby
product related discount and offers on their mobile phone. It helps them too to get personalize
offers. (Sandhusen, 2008).
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).
Issue 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).

Issue 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.

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