A Critical Assessment of Walmart's Marketing Strategy and Objectives

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Walmart's strategic marketing plan, focusing on its corporate and business objectives. It begins with an introduction to marketing and strategic marketing planning, followed by an overview of Walmart, including its vision, mission, and objectives. The core of the report examines Walmart's marketing theory, specifically the 7 Ps of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical Evidence) and the STP model (Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning). The report delves into how Walmart applies these marketing tools to reach its target market, emphasizing its focus on affordability, convenience, and customer satisfaction. The analysis includes segmentation based on geographic, demographic, and behavioral factors, targeting the lower and middle classes, and positioning as a provider of low-priced goods. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of marketing in achieving organizational goals and establishing a strong market presence.

Strategic Marketing
Planning

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................2
Using an SME organisation of your choice, in agreement with your module tutor, critically
Assess the corporate and business strategic objectives of that organisation. Use relevant
marketing theory to illustrate your answer.............................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
For attracting the customer, every organisation performs some promotional activities which
are known as marketing. It is a process of creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging
offerings with the values of customers, clients, partners and society. And marketing research is a
process of identifying marketing problems and opportunities. Basically it can be said that the
tools which are used by any organisation which helps in the promotion of their goods and
services is known as Marketing. Before doing any action in the market, organisation have to
prepare a detailed plan, that plan is known as Strategic Marketing Plan. It states the employees of
organisation that what to do and when to do. The purpose of this report is to analysis the
marketing theory of Walmart which include 7 P’s of marketing Mix and STP Model alng with
the overview, cision, mission and objectives of Walmart Inc.
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TASK 1
Using an SME organisation of your choice, in agreement with your module tutor, critically
Assess the corporate and business strategic objectives of that organisation. Use relevant
marketing theory to illustrate your answer.
Overview of Organisation
Sam Walton founded Walmart Inc. which is a multinational retail company that operates the
chain of hypermarket, grocery store, discounted department store in 1962 but it was incorporated
in 1969. It is the world’s largest company by revenue i.e. US$548.743 billion having headquarter
in Bentonville, Arkansas, U.S. According to a current record, almost 11443 stores and clubs are
currently working in approx 26 countries with various names. The journey of Walmart started in
1945, when Sam Walton purchase a branch of Ben Frankin stores from Butler Brothers. They
only focus on increasing sales, in regarding this, they started selling goods at low prices having
less margin. Walton visited Ann & Hope and got inspired, after that he opened his first Walmart
store in 1962 by copying the design of Ann & Hope at Walnut Street in Rogers, Arkansas.
Vision of Organisation
Vision statement of Walmart is Be the destination for customers to save money, no matter
how they want to shop. Affordability, Convenience and customer oriented are few components
which comes out from the above mentioned Vision statement. It’s vision is to be provide good to
customer on affordable prices so that they can make huge revenue and they can built good
relations with customer to get future advantage as well.
Mission of Organisation
To save people money, so that they can live better is the mission statement of Walmart Inc. From
this statement, it is clear that they are focusing on improving people lives, financial liberation
and exceeding expectations(Liasidou 2017). They mainly focus on the savings of customer while
shopping. They want to improve the living standard of people, because of this, they provide
goods at affordable prices so that customers can do savings for other expenses.
Objectives of Organisation
Walmart is aiming to serve the all customers of world. For this purpose they are planning
many strategy such as quality management, process and capacity design, location strategy,
layout design and strategy, supply chain management etc. Their main objective is to provide
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goods of good quality to maximum number of customer on affordable prices, so that they can
make good revenue and take position in the mind of customer.
Marketing Theory
7 P’s of Marketing Mix
7 P’s are the combination of market research that help the organisation to know about the
marketing tactics(Mönch and et. al., 2018). Every organisation use 7 P’s of marketing mix as a
tool of marketing strategy. Following are the 7 P’s of Marketing Mix:
 Product- The goods and services which any organisation is making to generate revenue is
known as product. Every organisation should make sure that the product should satisfy
the need of customer.
 Price- It effects the customer a lot. On the basis of price, customer take the decision of
buying the product. The price of product should be affordable, so that every customer can
buy the product.
 Promotion- At this level, the selection of promotional tool is decided by the organisation.
Promotional tool are advertising, sales tactics, promotion and direct marketing. It is the
process through which any organisation informs the customers about products.
Place- Company have to decide the place of sale, where customer can reach easily. There are lots
of competitors in the market, if the customer find any difficulty in finding any specific store, they
will make purchase from nearby store(Bocconcelli and et. al.,2018)
 People- Marketing manager and sales person are considered as people. If these people
provide good service to customer, this will help the organisation to built a positive
reputation in the market.
 Process- It refers to those processes which any organisation do follow for providing
goods and services to the customer. Process effects a lot to an organisation as it shows the
standard of service and increase efficiency.
 Physical Evidence- How the stores are looking, packaging, branding, layout, physical
environment are some evidence which a customer see before making purchase of any
good or service.
STP marketing: Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning model
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning are three steps or composition of STP marketing which
is a marketing tool used by various organisations to know about the suitable market, customer of
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their product etc(Morimoto 2018). It reduce the wastage of time and money of company which
they are going to spent on the advertisement for those customers who are not suitable for them. It
is helpful for the organisation, when they are making marketing communication plans.
Components of STP analyses are given below:
Segmentation:
Under the first component of STP analysis, organisations divide the complete market or
customers in various segments, so that they can know the nature, culture, choice of whole market
and then they can make target according to their product. Four important audience segmentation
are given below:
1. Geographic Segmentation- It means to divide or making segment on the basis of location
of customers i.e. country, state, region etc.
2. Demographic Segmentation- Age, gender, education level, occupation are some basis of
division of audience in demographic segmentation.
3. Behavioural Segmentation- Division or segmentation of market audience on the basis of
interaction between customers and company. It means the loyalty of customer, buying
behaviour of customer.
4. Psycho graphic Segmentation- Making segment of customers on the basis of hobbies,
lifestyles, activities, opinions of customers is known as Psycho Graphic Segmentation.
Walmart is a huge multinational brand currently working in almost 27 countries(Anwar and et.
al., 2020). So they are dividing or making segments of their audience on the basis of location,
behaviour and ages. It means they are following Geographic, Demographic and Behavioural
Segmentation. Under which they divide their audience on the basis of location because they
found that people living in different countries have different demand of products. Various age
group and different income of customers are also making demand of different products. Along
with this, behavioural segmentation states the demand of customers is based on the occasions,
user status etc.
Targeting:
It is the process of analysing all the segments that which one is best and which segment contain
potential customers of business. At this stage, the customers become limited. After selecting the
group of potential customers, organisation have to target that customers only because they are
interested in buying their product. This step is essential step for every organisation as this step
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remove the difference between organisation and the potential customer(Rafailov 2017). After
selecting their potential segment, company have to show their marketing efforts to them to
convert that audience into customer which result in the generation of revenue.
Walmart is continuously focusing on lower and middle class customer. This strategy is already
got success in U.S. They are focusing on low price to attract all customers(Aithal 2018). Even
they put their slogan as Save money, live better which indicate that they are motivating people to
buy product from their stores which will help them to save money. Having a big supermarket
means customer can get everything that want under a single roof also, for attracting children,
they started selling toys as well. Walmart also focus on providing goods to the people who are
living in small towns because many of branded retailers are not opening their stores in the areas,
where the population is less than 50000 or 12000.
Positioning:
After doing the selection of potential customers for the business, now the company have to
establish the product in the market or change market. For that purpose they have to make a rough
plan so that they can perform well.
Walmart is following the strategy of less price and providing more satisfaction to the
customers which will help the organisation to generate large revenue as well as positive
reputation in the market(Rosenbaum-Elliott 2021). This strategy will also help the organisation
in beating the competition and making the customer permanent or for future.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it is concluded that marketing is the essential element for every
organisation in making profit and reputation in the market. It’s main focus is to make sale by
hook or by crook and doing marketing or converting the audience into customer process is done
by the marketing manager or marketing person. Furthermore, it is analysed that for improving
the performance of any organisation in the market , it is necessary to follow marketing theory
which include 7 P’s of marketing mix and STP analysis.
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REFERENCES
Books and journal
Aithal, R.K. and Maurya, H., 2018. Distribution Challenges in Emerging Markets: Evaluating
Alternate Distribution Strategies for FMCG Firms in Rural India. In Strategic Marketing
Issues in Emerging Markets (pp. 51-60). Springer, Singapore.
Anwar and et. al., 2020. Strategic imperatives of mobile commerce in developing countries: the
influence of consumer innovativeness, ubiquity, perceived value, risk, and cost on
usage. Journal of Strategic Marketing, pp.1-21.
Bocconcelli and et. al.,2018. SMEs and marketing: a systematic literature review. International
Journal of Management Reviews, 20(2), pp.227-254.
Liasidou, S., 2017. Drafting a realistic tourism policy: The airlines’ strategic influence. Tourism
Review.
Mönch and et. al., 2018. A survey of semiconductor supply chain models part I: semiconductor
supply chains, strategic network design, and supply chain simulation. International
Journal of Production Research, 56(13), pp.4524-4545.
Morimoto, Y. and Guillaume, R.O., 2018. Reconceptualizing Strategic Planning: Planning
Strategically for Student Success. Journal of Applied Research in the Community
College, 25(2), pp.23-30.
Rafailov, M.K., 2017. Strategic planning of rural territories development: interbranch
relationships. Ekonomika Sel'skokhozyaĭstvennykh i Pererabatyvayushchikh Predpriyatiĭ,
(2), pp.38-41.
Rosenbaum-Elliott, R., 2021. Strategic advertising management. Oxford University Press.
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