Two different market segments
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 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.
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.
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:
Digital marketing tools and techniques
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 (Ioni??, 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 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.
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).
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 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).
Strengths and weakness of digital marketing strategy used by Wal-Mart
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.
References
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