An In-Depth Analysis of Walmart's Contemporary Marketing Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Walmart's digital marketing strategies. It begins with an executive summary and introduction, followed by an examination of the company's target market segments, which include all ages and income levels, achieved through diverse product offerings and low pricing. The report then details the digital marketing tools and techniques employed by Walmart, such as content marketing, social media strategies, and mobile applications, highlighting their impact on brand image, customer engagement, and personalized marketing. Furthermore, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Walmart's digital marketing approach, including its data-driven strategies and customer loyalty programs, while also pointing out areas for improvement, such as the need for enhanced online purchase promotion and a more dedicated digital marketing team. The report concludes with recommendations for optimizing Walmart's digital marketing efforts, including the use of data analytics, increased promotion on digital platforms, and the integration of AI and loyalty schemes to maintain a competitive edge in the retail industry.

Contemporary Marketing

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Digital marketing has become the base of the marketing campaign that different companies
are doing. People are spending most of their time on the digital media platforms hence
company can use it effectively for reaching to more numbers of people at minimum of cost
and in the limited amount of time. From this report, a conclusion regarding the target markets
on which Wal-Mart relies has been highlighted. Apart from this the report shows the
positioning strategy of the company. It also shows the tools and techniques that is used by the
company in their digital marketing strategies and hence analyses the strengths and weakness
of their marketing strategy. It is found that Wal-Mart is using its digital marketing strategies
in an effective manner but needs to improve a bit more as they are very lenient in using their
digital marketing tools.

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Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY........................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................2
Two different market segments..................................................................................................2
Digital marketing tools and techniques......................................................................................2
Strengths and weakness of digital marketing strategy used by Wal-Mart.................................3
Recommendations......................................................................................................................4
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES...........................................................................................................................5
INTRODUCTION
In the era of digital technologies, it has become essential for the organisations to understand
the importance of using digital marketing tools for their promotions. First appropriate

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selection of target segment needs to be done then it is crucial that corresponding positioning
strategy is created so as to improve their purchasing behaviour within the country (Yi &
Gong, 2013). It is also essential that company has a regular audit of their strength and
weaknesses of the digital marketing strategy so as to improve their digital marketing strategy.
Wallmart is known in different parts of the world for its Brick and Mortar kind of set up but
they have now entered into the online business and more importantly it is using digital
mediums for its marketing purpose (Egol, Peterson & Stroh, 2014). This report analyses two
different market segments that Wallmart can target along with their corresponding
positioning strategy. It also highlights the digital marketing tools and techniques that are used
by the company as well as the strengths and weakness of these strategies.
Two different market segments
They have planned their marketing segmentation in a manner that they cover large part of the
market. The segmentation has been done on the basis of different segmentation variables. The
two major segments of the market on which they focused upon are in terms of age where they
targeted individual of all ages and in terms of income they have targeted both low and middle
class people (Sponder & Khan, 2017).
Since they have products available for the people of all the ages hence they can target them
easily. Their product range is highly diverse and hence will be able to satisfy the needs of this
target segment. Apart from this Wal-Mart is known for its low cost price tag on their products
hence will be able to target both low and medium income age groups easily.
For targeting people of all the age group they have positioned themselves as one of those
companies that has all variety of products. On the other hand they have also positioned
themselves as the firm that offers its product on the lowest of prices (Peeroo, Samy & Jones,
2015). They use pricing advantage to be sustainable in its business model. The whole
designing of its business model is in a manner that they could be able to produce products at
lowest of price. This type of positioning has helped them in targeting people from all the
segments of the society and their major focus still remains the people that are from the lower
and middle class. This gives them competitive advantage over the rivals as most of their
competitors try to target middle and upper class of people hence a very target segment
remains untouched.

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Digital marketing tools and techniques
It has become essential for the organisations like Walmart to take higher use of digital
marketing tools and techniques for their marketing process. There are people that are from
the local and international level that company aims to target and for this the tools or
techniques that Wal-Mart uses are:
Content marketing techniques: Wal-Mart uses this tool so as to build publicize its brand
image. Its content depicts images, blog posts, news items and videos that have certain kind of
clear message (Baltes, 2015). Good content is always a priority for the Wal-Mart that aims to
target people from every age group (Ioniţă, 2014). The biggest platform for using this
marketing tool is their website (Sheldrake, 2011). Apart from this what content marketing
provides is flexibility where they can reframe their stories so as to attract specific target
segment towards their business. Content marketing has also helped the company in increasing
the understanding about their business which is very much necessary for improving the
relationship with the customers.
Social media strategy: One of the prime focuses of the company is towards using social
media platforms for their marketing. Social media is acting as a tool that enables them to
target people from different sections of the society (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger & Shapiro, 2012).
Since the number of users at the social media platforms have increased at much faster rate
hence it acts a wonderful platform where people can be targeted. Social media has a power to
spread the news like a wildfire and hence acts as a platform where the new plans and offers
can be circulated among large numbers of people in a very short-period of time
(Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). The likes and dislikes acts as information
which the company could use for understanding the product demand. The modern day
marketing fight is run on the effective platforms such as social media. This is an effective
platform where the company can beat all its competitors and increase the base consumer
market. On the other hand, it is also helpful for interacting with their customers at the mass
level.
Mobile applications: Since the mobile devices has reached to billions of people all around
the world and the technology related to mobile has become very much advanced (Gulbahar &
Yildirim, 2015). These advancements can be used by Wal-Mart for doing marketing. The
most effective kind of marketing this technique provides is personalised marketing. It is very
much effective in targeting each and every people in the targeting people from different

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segments (Yannopoulos, 2011). Individual related data plays a very crucial role in this. Wal-
mart has been using personalised marketing so as to target people from the local areas and
hence more numbers of people can get attracted towards their brick and mortar shops. Mobile
applications help in both ways that is doing marketing as well as selling products through
online mediums.
Strengths and weakness of digital marketing strategy used by Wal-Mart
They are using different kinds of digital marketing strategies so as to increase their reach of
marketing. It is having both positive and negative aspects which are elaborated below.
Strengths
 It has transformed its digital marketing campaign to become more dependent on data.
 Their digital marketing strategies push for development of loyalty among customers
so as to give edge over the competitors (Roberts & Zahay, 2012).
 They are offering their digital marketing services to its suppliers which increase the
company’s confidence on their suppliers and hence a stronger bond is made between
them.
Weaknesses
 Till now they have been poorly using all their digital marketing tools for their
promotional events especially when compared with their competitors.
 Their digital marketing strategies are more focused towards in store purchases rather
than making online purchases. This has reduced the company’s expansion policy.
 Along with this extra dependency of the company on their suppliers for their digital
marketing campaigns may leave their marketing campaign to be poor as more
dedicated team of digital marketing is required by the firm (Volpe, 2011).
Recommendations
In the age of digital marketing campaign it is essential for the company to understand the way
in which customers are using various digital marketing strategies. It is recommended that data
analytics should be used in the organisations for making the strategies (Coupey, 2016). This
is because collection of data will help the company to change their marketing campaigns

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accordingly. Most effective use of data analytics will be in the case of personalised marketing
which is again very much effective in increasing the purchasing intention. Apart from this, it
is also recommended that company promotes its brand more rigorously at digital media
platforms such as mobile based app. This is very much necessary for improving the reach of
the company in the lives of people and company can have real-time interaction with their
consumers (Stephen, 2016).
The content based marketing must be linked with their social media marketing so as to ensure
that company’s idea should be reached to as many people as possible. At the time of strategy
formulation the changing demands of the consumers must be given the priority. For example
the products that are more in the demand must be marketed at the top. Along with this, it is
also crucial that company train their other employees too and involve them in their digital
marketing strategy (Hendrix, 2014). This will just increase the reach of the company among
the people. At the same time company should also invest on the artificial intelligence so as to
collect and process the data. AI will remove the flaws that might arise due to human failure or
other types of mistakes. Loyalty schemes should be launched for the users that are
continuously associated with the company at the digital platforms.
Conclusion
From the above based report it can be concluded that Wal-Mart is a big brand name in the
retail industry and hence they need to focus more on the digital media platforms as to
maintain their edge in the competitive rivalry. They have segmented two types of groups
basically first, in terms of age where people belong from every age group are their target and
other is in terms of income where low and medium income people are their target markets.
They have positioned themselves as one of those companies that offers low price products.
Content marketing, social media and mobile applications are their major digital marketing
tools and techniques used by the company for targeting people. Over dependency of company
on their suppliers for the digital media campaigning has reduced their chances to gain
competitive advantage over the rivals in terms of digital market.

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REFERENCES
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Berthon, P. R., Pitt, L. F., Plangger, K., & Shapiro, D. (2012). Marketing meets Web 2.0,
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Ioniţă, I. M. (2014). New Technologies Impact in Nowadays Shopping Centers
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Peeroo, S., Samy, M., & Jones, B. (2015). Customer engagement manifestations on Facebook
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Yannopoulos, P. (2011). Impact of the Internet on marketing strategy
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