Week 11 – Integrated Marketing Communications

Wal-Mart currently has a sale promotion for the holiday season; they are now offering free shipping from walmart.com to homes this season with no minimum purchase required. Wal-Mart uses communication through television commercials, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter. One way Wal-Maart mass communicates to its consumers is through their flyer.

Week 10 – Product Concepts

            Wal-Mart’s sells mostly convenience products to their consumers. These products are usually inexpensive and require little shopping effort and planning. Most consumers who enter Wal-Mart already know which products they will be receiving. Wal-Mart like most large retail and grocery chains, offer private store brands. These brands are referred to as house brands or generic brands and are usually lower priced items. Some of the brands carried by Wal-Mart include;

 

·       Sam’s Choice

·       Great Value

·      Ol' Roy

·       Parents Choice

Sales Promotion & Personal Selling

Marketers use sales promotion to increase the effectiveness of their promotional efforts. Wal-mart does this by using consumer sales promotion with such tactics like online promoting. Wal -Mart is currently offering holiday online specials, which gives consumers the incentive to buy products online. Wal-Mart also offers Wal-Mart credit cards which gives the consumers the encouragement to buy more products at a higher cost from which in a way is a form of sales promotion. Wal-Mart offers free site to store shipping on eligible items, improving online shopping for consumers. Wal-Mart also has “Rollback Prices”, in which they reduce all ready low prices.

Wal-Mart Ad

Wal-Mart Ad

Week 8 – Advertising & Public Relations

Wal-Mart is an institution that many middle class families living in a suburban area already know about. But that’s not to say that Wal-Mart doesn’t advertise or promote their services and goods. Wal-Mart uses both institutional and product advertising. Institutional advertising is used when a company wants to build up their image; product advertising is used when the company wants to enhance the sales of a specific good or service. Wal-Mart is a discount store but is trying to change their image from targeting to just lower middle class to upper middle class. Wal-Mart advertises this by changing what they sell in their stores. One of Wal-Mart’s brands for junior clothes was No Boundaries, which has now changed; they now sell a line by Miley Cyrus made for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart advertises their products online, through television ads, and through their own circular that comes out every week. Companies also advertise through a unique selling proposition which is the company’s slogan. Wal-Mart’s slogan is “Always Low Prices, Always”. Their slogan uses profit as an advertising appeal it lets consumers know that their products are at low prices and can save them money.

Week 7 – Retailing

            Wal-Mart is one of the companies that dominates the retailing industry. Their annual U.S sales are greater than the next five U.S retail sales combined! Wal-Mart would be categorized as a discount store; it is the largest full line discount store. A lot of Wal-Marts retailing comes from the online selection of toys and electronics. Wal-Mart also participates in scrambled merchandising meaning it provides a wide variety of nontraditional goods and services under one roof. Many Wal-Marts are now ’24 Hour Supercenters’ in that they have supermarkets, pharmacies, photo centers, vision centers, auto centers, nail salons, and some locations have fast food chains like Subways or Dunkin Donuts. Wal-Mart uses data mining which helps retailers make better product mix decisions. Wal-Mart uses this to manage markdowns, how to advertise to their target market, and determine which products to stock at what price.

Week 6 - Consumer Decision Making

When a company knows the consumer’s behavior, it knows which consumer to market to and the target market. Wal-Mart is very aware of their consumer’s behavior. Wal-Mart knows that the average Wal-Mart shopping is an everyday family living from pay check to pay check. The Wal-Mart consumer could also be a middle class family. These types of families are usually on a budget and buy only the necessities.  Most of Wal- Mart’s consumers have a routine response behavior means the type of decision making exhibited by the consumer buying frequently purchased, low cost goods and services, and requires little search and research.