BUS314: Marketing Management
Walmart is a worldwide retail corporation whose headquarters is in Arkansas, USA. Wal-Mart runs a large chain of discount department stores and also a chain of warehouse stores. Wal-Mart prides itself of being the largest majority private employer and the largest retailer or grocery in the US. Walmart has presence in fifteen countries and stores totaling 11,510 stores. Fifty-five of the stores operate under a different name (Parnell and Lester, 2018). Across these, Walmart offers various products and services at a reasonable price. These products include electronics, toys, hardware, houseware and furnishings, sporting goods, toys, clothes, automotive, jewelry and grocery, among many others. Services offered include Walmart MoneyCard, Pickup Today, Financial services and Walmart Pay.
Purpose of a Marketing Plan
This marketing plan aims to provide Walmart with market information that will ensure its competitiveness in the already competitive retail market. Besides, the plan will assist in designing future strategies that will be helpful to Walmart as far as maintaining profitability and customer loyalty is concerned. As it is known, a company can only survive in the market if it is financially healthy; therefore, strategizing on plans that will make the company stay afloat in the market is essential. Through the profits made, a company can maintain its stability in the market. Profits realized in Walmart have always been good but staying in the comfort zone is risky and thus the need to set goals and surpass them. Therefore, for Walmart to continue registering profits, it is essential that it understands the changing individual needs of its customers and subsequently address them effectively. The profitability can also be enhanced by minimizing operational costs while still delivering quality products and services to the market. The realization of all these is pegged very much on the marketing plan; a good marketing plan equals good returns and market growth.
Walmart’s current market goals and objectives are focused on achieving sustainable competitive advantages in the business world by providing low-priced products. The company also focuses on aggregating research expenses on potential customers and prospective products by a 25% margin. The company hopes to achieve these goals and objectives through different ways. One of the ways is by ensuring that its customers have a strong association with Walmart’s products and services. A marketing plan that is geared toward attaining customer loyalty for products and services is thus critical. Another plan would be to research on potential customers as well as future brands. By conducting the research, Walmart may have a perfect idea of the kind of brands it ought to introduce in the market and the brands that should be withdrawn.
Mission Statement
The Wal-Mart mission statement is to assist people in saving money so they can have a better life. The statement defines the company’s purpose, what they stand for, how they will conduct their businesses, and why they are in the business. The goals and objectives of Walmart are consistent with its mission (Ferguson, 2019). The saving of money ensures that people afford to live a better life. This is very much aligned with the company’s objective of low-priced and high-quality goods and services. These goals and objectives are also consistent with the recent trends in the external environment where it can compete competitively with rival companies. Offering low-priced and high-quality commodities ensures customer loyalty, thereby shielding the company
Marketing Plan
For a business to keep up with its competitors and continually achieve success, having an operational plan is an inevitable step. Through excellent planning, the enterprise is able to coordinate its finances and all the internal and external factors affecting its operations (Ostaev et al., 2019). For this report on Walmart enterprise, we are going to use the SWOT analysis as an essential component of the marketing plan.
Strengths
Walmart enterprise deals with an unlimited variety of products with recognizable brands in all the sectors of the items. More than 60 million different products are accessible through the company’s online store (Jindal et al., 2021). It acts as a purchasing hub for the customers since they find all that they need in one place. Secondly, the company has global significance. It has continually opened new locations leading to an increased operating capacity. The company opened 48 new outlets in Central America, 16 in Chile, 10 in the United Kingdom, and 5 in China in 2017 (Martinez, Galvan & Alam, 2017). Further, the entity’s relatively low prices of the products compared to the competitors win a big proportion of the global market customers since most are average income earners (Jindal et al., 2021).
Weaknesses
Several instances of lawsuits due to the poor working environment, poor salaries, and neglected healthcare have often faced the company’s management (Jindal et al., 2021). Due to the fair prices of the products available for sale in Walmart stores, the profit margin is considerably shallow hence a limitation to attaining higher levels of revenue. The company employs a cost leadership strategy. Gender segregation is not an exemption in Walmart. In 2007, a lawsuit was filed in US federal court against Walmart, purporting that female employee are discriminated against and taken advantage of in exchange for bonuses and promotion (Martinez, Galvan & Alam, 2017). Finally, the uniqueness of the Walmart brand is not very profound. Imitation and breaking the originality of their marketable goods is an easy task for other businesses with a similar line of operation. The company does not possess a distinctive competitive line over its competitors, and this reduces the sale efficiency of its products.
Opportunities
Walmart Company is not limited to growth opportunities. Despite being an international enterprise, the outlets of Walmart’s business are yet to land in some global markets. This is an opportunity for the firm to establish its brand to all prospective consumers around the globe. Such locations that are yet to experience more of Walmart’s impact are; China, Latin America, and Middle East nations (Jindal et al., 2021). Walmart is well placed to buy, merge and form joint ventures with other upcoming enterprises due to its strong brand. From the production and sale law, low-priced products reflect low-quality raw materials. Most of Walmart’s products are cheaply sold, insinuating that they are of low quality (Jindal et al., 2021). This is an area the enterprise can develop high-quality products to show health concerns to the customers.
Threats Controversial product selling activity is the main threat in Walmart stores. In 2017, the company was taken to bars for arguably selling a fake beer brand. WX produced the beer, but it had the “Trouble Brewery” trademark, which was a production plant that did not exist (Martinez, Galvan & Alam, 2017). Over time, Walmart has won the most significant proportion of customers in all the markets. However, this makes the company become the wholesome target of similar business operators. The competing partners tend to present better bonus sales compared to Walmart. Further, the rivals enjoy the negative reputation of Walmart treating her employees poorly. On a similar note, the devolved economic setup has seen the online market become crowded. New private and public companies are venturing into the digital selling of similar products as Walmart’s (Jindal et al., 2021). This is a threat to the future business extensions of Walmart
BUS314: Marketing Management
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