Walmart's Strategic Marketing

Walmart's Strategic Marketing
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Walmart's Strategic Marketing
Introduction
Walmart Inc. is a global retail company founded in 1962 by an American entrepreneur Sam Walton in Bentonville, Arkansas, which serves as its headquarters to date (Walmart, n.d.-b). The company went public in 1970 (Walmart, n.d.-b), which kickstarted a steady growth that has made it one of the largest retail giants in the contemporary world. Low product costs, the cohesiveness of the management, Sam's legacy, and visionary leadership are the company's major driving forces of success. The company boasts of having one of the largest customer bases globally, with over 265 million customers. Over 11 400 stores spread across 26 countries, working parallel with its e-commerce platform as of 2020 (Walmart, n.d.-a). The company recorded a record high revenue of $524 billion in 2020 with the help of over 2.2 million employees, which makes it the largest private employer according to Fortune Global 500 (Fortune, n.d.). Walmart is a business to consumer (B2C) company where the end-users of the products and services are the consumers. Walmart Inc's competitors include Amazon, Best Buy, Costco, Kroger, Walgreens, Home Depot.
Walmart Business Model
Walmart is a business-to-consumer (B2C) company that makes the products and services available to its esteemed customers through brick and motor and lately through its e-commerce platform walmart.com. Brick and motor are mainly stores designed to serve as supercenters, discount stores, or neighborhood markets (Chatterjee, 2017). The different store formats sell a wide range of products, ranging from groceries and consumables, home and apparel, fuel, electronic and entertainment equipment, health and wellness products. Grocery products are the core of Walmart's business model, contributing a whopping 56 % of the total revenue (Fortune, n.d.). The e-commerce segment has gained popularity and profitability, contributing over $50 billion in 2019 (Nassauer, 2020). To harmonize operations and processes, the company decided to unify the sales team of both online and stores in the new structure to ensure consistency (Nassauer, 2020). The strategy also aims to keep their largest competitor on the online platform, Amazon, on toes while also embracing diversity with the kind of products offered online. The company has also incorporated some strategic programs into its business model to remain competitive despite its all-time low prices and cost that has been the pillar of its success. These include Rollbacks, Saving catchers, Walmart Pickup, Pickup today, online grocery, and money-back guarantee (Sohl et al., 2020).
Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is an essential component of target marketing that aims at dividing a particular market into smaller and manageable portions called segments to enhance customer satisfaction and attain business goals (Dolnicar et al., 2018). The basis for consumer market segmentation, sometimes recognized as a type of market segmentation, refers to different criteria a marketer can deploy to efficiently put the consumers in their appropriate segment (Camilleri, 2018). The four market segmentation bases include demographic, psychographic, behavioral, and geogr...