Internet Marketing Report: Walmart's Digital Transformation and Impact

This report provides an in-depth analysis of internet marketing strategies, focusing on a case study of Walmart. It begins with an introduction to internet marketing, its role in the modern marketing context, and how Walmart utilizes digital marketing to reach its customers. The report then delves into the benefits of internet marketing for customers, including opportunities for comparison shopping, dynamic pricing, and improved customer service. It also explores the advantages and opportunities that internet marketing offers to businesses, such as reaching a wider audience, reducing overhead costs, and expanding the company's reach. Furthermore, the report examines how internet marketing has made Walmart more efficient, effective, and successful. It concludes by discussing the challenges of globalization faced by Walmart when using the internet as a marketing tool, such as costs, content management, and security concerns. The report provides a comprehensive overview of Walmart's digital marketing strategies, offering valuable insights into its successes and the challenges it faces in the competitive online retail landscape.

Internet Marketing

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Role of internet marketing has within a modern marketing context......................................1
P 2 How Walmart used digital marketing...................................................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
P3 Benefits to customers of a business using internet marketing...............................................3
M1...............................................................................................................................................3
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................4
P4 Description of benefits and opportunities to the business of using internet marketing.........4
P5 How internet marketing has made Walmart more efficient, effective and successful...........4
P6 Challenges of globalisation faced by Walmart when using internet as marketing tool.........5
M2...............................................................................................................................................5
TASK 4 ...........................................................................................................................................6
D1................................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
It is the process of promoting a brand, products or services over the Internet. Its broad
scope includes email marketing, electronic customer relationship management and any
promotional activities that are done via wireless media. It also combines the technical and
creative aspects of the World Wide Web such as advertising, designing, development and sales.
Moreover, Internet Marketing also deals with creating and placing ads throughout the various
stages of customer engagement cycle (Andreopoulou, and et. al., 2014). The Internet has the
power to connect millions of people from around the world. Apart from this digital
merchandising plays a very eminent role in the modern marketing which act as a very effective
methods for customers. Present report is based on Walmart which is an American multinational
retailing corporation that operates as a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and
grocery stores (What is Internet Marketing?, 2017). In the below mentioned report, discussion on
role of internet marketing with the modern time. Along with this demonstration on that how
business entity is using digital marketing.
TASK 1
P1 Role of internet marketing has within a modern marketing context
Marketing is the method of communicating that the price of a goods or services to
customer, for expected selling. It is the communicating method between a society’s demand-able
materials and economic pattern in exchanging money. Product, Price, Place and Promotion
known as 4Ps and marketing mix. These are the base of marketing. which is development
product and distribute to different place to sell with price and it’s promotional activities, 4Ps
extended to 7Ps (Bailey, 2011). Marketing also mixing of relationship marketing, identification
of new product and market development opportunities, modern information and communications
technologies such as ICT, tactics to reach business goals, targeting and market segmentation.
Demographical, psycho-graphic, economic, usage based; business-to-business, business-to
customer and customer-to-consumer, disintermediation and direct market communication by
manufacturers.
Internet marketing popularity is increasing day by day. Many business organizations are
using internet to direct communicate with customer and to get more attention of customers(Chen,
2011).
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Internet marketing: greater individualisation of market attention eg one-to-one
relationships, mass customisation, increased information and cost-effective information
gathering methods; reaching wider and more distant markets; product impact, enhancing
traditional products and services, online games and music, mix between on and off line activities;
opportunities enhancing marketing effectiveness example through ‘one-to-one’ communications;
understand customers and target more effectively. Apart from this walmart is one of the famous
organization providing online services to their clients across the globe with the help of advanced
technology. Lastly internet marketing act as a very indispensable tool or method in modern
market due to their positivity and effectiveness.
P 2 How Walmart used digital marketing
Walmart is a huge organization, It has several different kinds of stores in the U.S.,
including the traditional Walmart Supercenters, Sam's Club, and an increasing number of
"neighborhood markets" (grocery stores), and is testing others. Walmart Technology, based in
Bentonville, focuses on building and managing technology for the stores themselves, while
Global e- Commerce, based in Silicon Valley, develops the e-commerce technologies and runs
the sites (Christiansen, 2011). The company now has more than 2,100 employees in the Valley,
including 1,000 hired in the last year. And it has made 12 technology acquisitions in the last
three years. The company said that more than 65 percent of Walmart customers (and 80 percent
of those under the age of 35) have smartphones, and that half of Walmart smartphone users have
used their devices to assist with shopping while in the store. With this application, a customer
goes to a website after shopping, enters the receipt number, and Savings Catcher compares the
items he or she purchased to the price in the weekly print ads of local retailers. If the items are
available elsewhere for less, the customer gets a gift card with the difference (Fritz, 2013).
The idea here is to automatically collect a customer's receipts in the mobile app, so that
customers can search their purchase history or pick specific items they need to stock up on. In
this vision, e-Receipts is a platform upon which the company can build other applications.
Digital marketing might help customers shop more efficiently; and also means they don't have to
take items out of their basket at checkout.
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TASK 2
P3 Benefits to customers of a business using internet marketing
Benefits to customers: Opportunities to compare and select providers; increased
bargaining power; availability of more comprehensive and up-to-date product information;
opportunities for lower costs via ‘dynamic pricing’ example internet auctions; greater supply
convenience through availability of responsive transaction facilities (Jobber, 2012). Good
customer service is a benefit from a customer shopping with a business who uses internet
marketing. This is because the online services will be quick and easy and therefore satisfactory
towards customers. Also, websites such as Amazon will have welcome banners which are polite
and friendly to customer – this is a way of them giving good customer service.
Walmart will have reviews and complaints on their products; this is a good quality a
customer services because it allows customers to view an insight of goods/service they may
potentially buy. By having complaints and reviews about the product it can warn customers that
they aren't worth buying and would therefore save the customer time and money. Also their are
customer to customer interactions on Walmart because they can talk to each other about different
products and what they think of them (Ellis-Chadwick, 2012). this benefits the customer because
then they can discuss advantages and disadvantages of a product with another person. This could
help the customer with their choice of buying the product. A benefit of a customer shopping with
a business who uses internet marketing is that hey can experience dynamic pricing. Dynamic
pricing is when a price of a product or service changes due to certain actors such as changes in
the economy, seasonal changes etc. This means customers who shop online can save money on
these circumstances.
M1
If the customers do their shopping online from this they save the travel cost and less time;
if we go to the shopping we have to look around for the product we want to buy but online it’s
just one click of a button (Roberts, 2012). The internet has changed customer shopping habits
and with rapid technological developments accessing the internet has become easier than ever.
People can access the internet whenever and wherever they like. One of the greatest advantages
for the customer is that they can compare products or services they wish to purchase from the
comfort of their own homes. Instead of having to visit a number of different retail outlets, the
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user simply has to open different internet window tabs to compare prices or features of the
product/service they wish to purchase (Zahay, 2012).
TASK 3
P4 Description of benefits and opportunities to the business of using internet marketing
Internet marketing has many opportunities that will benefit a business for example it can
help businesses to reach a wider audience, to reduce overhead cost of the business and to expand
the company.
Target market :- The target market is basically the audience and the business that will do
anything to attract their target market to the business. In the target market there are different
types of customer that prefer different types of products for example:-
 Demographic segmentation- Age, gender , price lifestyle and cultures.
 Psycho-graphic segmentation.
Benefits :- A benefit of mass customisation is that customers will be more satisfied as
they will be able to purchase the products that they want, tailored to them, that they otherwise
wouldn’t be able to offline. Therefore, customers are more likely to return to the business and
business can gain customer retention (Shih, 2013).
Opportunities :- Mass production can give a business opportunity, such as increasing
customers. As if products are being tailored to them and there is more choice, they are likely to
return to the business to purchase other products. This will therefore increase sales and revenue.
At the end benefit of dynamic pricing is that if a business constantly updates their prices
according to factors listed above, then they are likely to maximise their potential profits. It can
also mean that a business targets new market segments, such as customers that are looking for
low prices and that are price sensitive (Chen, 2013).
P5 How internet marketing has made Walmart more efficient, effective and successful
Digital merchandising plays a very eminent role in the cited organization due to their
effectiveness and usefulness which is very appropriate to promote a particular products.
Efficiency - Mass production is an efficient, as a company can have lots of the same
product made, this means that they will get a better price compared to if they were just buying a
few and therefore they can make the most profit possible.
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Effectiveness - Mass production is effective as a business can get all the stock that they
need at one time and from one place. This means that they can have high stock levels so that they
won’t keep their customers waiting for products, which may get them a bad reputation and may
cause consumers to not return to the business (Chen, 2013).
Success :- This means that they can make sure their customer are happy and therefore
gain customer retention, which will increase their profits.
P6 Challenges of globalisation faced by Walmart when using internet as marketing tool
One of the challenges of internet marketing is the costs. Costs of setting up a website can
be quite expensive, as you have to consider things such as, the domain name; protection of the
website; people looking after the website; designing the website; hosting and staff to look after
the consumer’s requests and query’s. So this is a big thing that a business has to think about
when starting up an online business or website, as all of these things add up and can end up
costing a lot of money (Taylor, 2010).
Another challenge of internet marketing can be the information a business puts on the
website. When creating a website, a business has to be careful of the content that they put on the
website. A business doesn’t want to overload the customer with information on products, as the
customer will get bored and find another website, which is more to the point and easier to read.
A challenge of internet marketing is security. An online business makes their profit
through online sales, and therefore needs to make sure that people feel secure and safe doing so.
They can do this by making sure their website has regular virus checks and some sort of software
to stop it from being hacked (Strutton, 2010).
M2
A business when starting up a website has to make sure that it is user friendly. This can
be a challenge, as a business will need to take into consideration their target market to decide
how to design the website so that it is suitable and so that they find it easy to use.
Brand awareness is an opportunity that businesses get, from internet marketing (Tsai,
2012).
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TASK 4
D1
This is effective as Walmart is more likely to gain customers, as people will enjoy being
on the website, as it makes their shopping experience more relaxing because they can do it from
the comfort of their homes. Walmart have already made their website quite visual, with lots of
pictures and features for customers to look at, instead of having to read lots of text (Cheng,
2012).
CONCLUSION
This report is all about the role of digital marketing in modern world due to the
emergence of more and more advanced technology. In fact it describes the overall effectiveness
of online selling used by one of the famous enterprise Walmart. Apart from this it included the
challenges faced by the cited company due to the establishment of recent technology and
equipments. Therefore they want to provide best facilities to their customers with the help of
various effective data and information.
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REFERENCES
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Andreopoulou, Z and et. al., 2014. Internet marketing for sustainable development and rural
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Bailey, M., 2011. Internet marketing: an hour a day. John Wiley & Sons.
Chen, K.C., 2011. Text mining e-complaints data from e-auction store with implications for
internet marketing research. Journal of Business & Economics Research (JBER). 7(5).
Christiansen, L., 2011. Personal privacy and Internet marketing: An impossible conflict or a
marriage made in heaven?. Business horizons. 54(6). pp.509-514.
Fritz, W., 2013. Internet-Marketing und Electronic Commerce: Grundlagen—
Rahmenbedingungen—Instrumente. Springer-Verlag.
Jobber, D and Ellis-Chadwick, F., 2012. Principles and practice of marketing (No. 7th).
McGraw-Hill Higher Education.
Roberts, M.L. and Zahay, D., 2012. Internet marketing: Integrating online and offline strategies.
Cengage Learning.
Shih, B.Y., Chen, C.Y and Chen, Z.S., 2013. An empirical study of an internet marketing
strategy for search engine optimization. Human Factors and Ergonomics in
Manufacturing & Service Industries. 23(6). pp.528-540.
Taylor, D.G and Strutton, D., 2010. Has e-marketing come of age? Modeling historical
influences on post-adoption era Internet consumer behaviors. Journal of business
research. 63(9). pp.950-956.
Tsai, Y.C. and Cheng, Y.T., 2012. Analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) for E-
commerce and Internet marketing of elderly products: A review. Archives of
gerontology and geriatrics. 55(1). pp.126-132.
Tsiotsou, R.H., Rigopoulou, I.D. and Kehagias, J.D., 2010. Tracing customer orientation and
marketing capabilities through retailers’ websites: A strategic approach to internet
marketing. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing. 18(2).
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Williams, M.J. And et. al., 2010. Internet marketing channel optimization. U.S. Patent
Application 12/707,111.
Online
What is Internet Marketing?. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.searchenginejournal.com/what-is-internet-marketing/56213/>. [Accessed
on 16th August 2017].
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