Landscape Analysis: Walmart
Walmart has several target markets that have helped the company remain competitive in the market. Walmart is a known superstore that carries a wide range of general merchandise ranging from clothing to groceries, gardening to home and office supplies and electronics. Their business model operates on huge turnovers and a low labor rate. Looking at its customer base, it can be concluded that the company is targeting families who prefer the convenience of shopping under a single roof (Walmart, 2021). Tentatively, an average Walmart target customer would be a 40–50-year-old women with an average income of about $50,000. While most products and services of Walmart target low to mid-income families, recent efforts by the company focus on making their brand more attractive to affluent shoppers.
When it comes to social media presence, Walmart is doing very well. Over the past six months, the company has had approximately 34,000,000 Facebook likes on its national Facebook page. The company has seven Twitter handles one of them being @Walmarthub which has over 210, 000 followers (Sabanoglu, 2020). On Pinterest, Walmart has gathered over 33, 000 followers. Nonetheless, the company has about 20 bloggers known as Walmart Moms. Walmart has one major website known as Walmart.com and about twenty smaller websites. In September 2020, Walmart.com had approximately 385.5 million visits. The number of website visits significantly increased from the previous months due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The company’s online shopping has undergone a surge due to measures taken by countries making people do more online shopping, especially in FMCG and grocery segment. With the greatest amount of reach, Walmart has a variety of comments on their official Facebook page ranging from trolling, genuine feedback, and confusion. On Twitter, Walmart has a discussion guidelines page that enables them to communicate what is expected by consumers. Some consumers have criticized the company on the blogosphere for its customer support.
Not every consumer uses online technology to buy products. So, traditional PR outreach is still an important component in Walmart with TV and print being the major ones. Over the last six months, the company has been building a critical PR outreach and is capitalizing in new products and capabilities that lets consumers to shift from a old-style method of buying to online. This has helped the company to double its revenue and advertisers over the past year. The largest percentage of Walmart’s promotion is through digital platforms. Along with other retailers the company has been capitalizing in digital ad aids that create income and help them reach the expanding online consumer base (Bruell, 2021). Traditional PR outreach such as television, newspapers, and radio are significantly supported by digital through social media platforms and websites. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the expansion of e-commerce and the need for better tools to enhance the company’s PR.
Walmart has a comprehensive and strict social media policy that all members of the company live by it. The social media policy prohibits workers from answering questions and complaints from customers directed towards the organization. Employees are not allowed to share the company’s private and confidential information on any social platform including their services, products, customers, and company business operations (Walmart, 2021). They are also advised to use the company’s established channels only for job-related issues. Nonetheless, workers are expected to be courteous and polite, stay on topic, and follow all social media engagement guidelines. However, the company does not restrict employees to use social media while working.
References
Sabanoglu, T. (2020, December 1). Web visitor traffic to Walmart.com 2020. Statista. Retrieved from, https://www.statista.com/statistics/714568/web-visits-to-walmartcom/.
Bruell, A. (2021, January 28). Walmart Revamps Ad-Sales Business to Expand Its Reach. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from, https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-revamps-ad-sales-business-to-expand-its-reach-11611838810.
Walmart. (2021, April 29). Walmart Policies and Guidelines. Corporate. Retrieved from, https://corporate.walmart.com/policies.
