2. 2
Tableof Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................3
Marketing Objectives ...........................................................................................................4
Target market .........................................................................................................................4
IMC objectives........................................................................................................................4
Direct marketing ....................................................................................................................5
Electronic media......................................................................................................................5
Magazine.................................................................................................................................6
Sales promotion ....................................................................................................................7
Point of sale.............................................................................................................................7
Price off Promotion..................................................................................................................7
Public relations......................................................................................................................8
Social Media ...........................................................................................................................8
Qualitative research................................................................................................................10
Measuring Advertising Effectiveness .....................................................................................11
Magazine readership measure................................................................................................ 11
Testing................................................................................................................................... 11
Pre testing............................................................................................................................. 11
Post testing............................................................................................................................ 11
Recommendation................................................................................................................12
Conclusion............................................................................................................................13
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................15
Appendix ...............................................................................................................................16
3. 3
Introduction
Integrated marketing communication is a strategy to ensure all
promotional tools or communications channel are integrated together to
work together in harmony. To have a deep inside of how the IMC
(integrated marketing communication) strategy are implemented in an
organization, I have selected Wal-Mart company to critically discuss the
strategies.
Wal-Mart stores, is an American public corporation that runs the biggest
chain of departmental stores in the world. The company was founded by
Sam Walton in 1962 and incorporated on October 31,1969. As of 31st
October,2016 it has more than 11500 stores and clubs in 28 countries
under the banner of 63 different names. In United Kingdom, for instance,
Walmart operates under the name of ASDA. As Per, the fortune Global
500 List in 2016, Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue, as
well as largest private employer in the world by providing employment to
2.1 million people in the world. Further, I will discuss the aspects of IMC
concept with regards to Wal-Mart company.
4. 4
Marketing Objectives
The main marketing objectives of Wal-Martcompanyis to provide modern
services to their valuable customers. Wal-Mart attain this objective by
providing better services and more products in their product range. Wal-
Mart has managed to keep the productprices cheaperas compare to their
competitors while maintaining quality of products same. The 30 % of the
queues have been reduced with the introduction of advanced technology
at the checkouts. In this way, they are providing customer satisfaction.
The organisation is successful in implementing the policy of lower prices
with customer satisfaction. The company uses different medias to
communicate their point of difference i.e. everyday low price.
Target market
Wal-Mart is targeting all the segments of societyas departmental store is
not specifically for any segment or group of society. However, most
number of customers of Wal-Mart are women of age twenties and thirties.
These women shop from Wal-Mart for themselves and their families.The
second group of market are males as they also buy products for their
families. In most of the marketing campaign Wal-Mart is not specific on a
particular group.
IMC objectives
This conceptfocuses onkeeping acompany’s marketing communications
consistent and coordinated. So, any messages the company deliver
through any kind of media should strengthen the consistency of brand
image.
Wal-Mart uses different medias and communication channels to
communicate their mission statement to the customers. Walmart’s
5. 5
missionstatement is “saving people moneyso they can live better” which
is synonyms to company’s slogan “Save money. Live better”. In Walmart,
IMC is enforced by amalgamating marketing channels to achieve
objectives and to strengthen relationships with customers and
stakeholders.
Direct marketing
Direct marketing involves the media which directly conveys the message
to the target market. It involves electronic mediasuch as television, radio,
magazines, sponsorships,newspapers and many more.Fortunately, Wal-
Mart uses mostof these mediums to convey its message of 'everyday low
prices' to its customers. Wal-Mart advertises their creative advert in the
television at peak viewing hours to target the greatest segment of the
market. Newspaperand magazines are used to deliver creative ideas that
a consumer can inculcate in their daily life, therefore enhancing their
lifestyle quality.
Electronic media
TV advertisement: - TV advertisement is the main media that Walmart
approaches It is a departmental store with broad range of products, so
company believe TV is an ideal medium to reach out to the public. Let’s
focus on some of the Advert that company made to reach out their
customers:
Christmas campaignadvert: TheASDA(Wal-Martin UK) Christmas advert
for 2016 bySaatchi& Saatchi (renowned advertising agency) features the
family audience and the Christmas celebration. As Christmas festive is
approaching soon. The ASDA advert features the tagline “Christmas
made better” and advert is made up of different moments of Christmas
(Rodger, 2016). These range from preparing Christmas drinks to
6. 6
Christmas presents. By this advert ASDA tries to build up the trust of
customers and providing every product that make customer’s Christmas
enjoyable and fulfill their expectations, including good quality and great
prices for the festive season. The same campaign and strategies was
adapted by ASDA during the Halloween time. ASDA’s strategy is to
persuade customers to buy all kind of festive products during festive
season with a price competitive offering which gave them an edge over
the competitors.
“The Real Wal-Mart” campaign: - the ‘Real Walmart’ campaign focuses
on two main areas: helping Walmart customers to succeed and helping
Walmart associates to succeed. This campaign was launched on
television and digital media. This advert demonstrates how people count
on Walmart to save money on products and how company provide career
opportunities for its associates. The people share their purchasing
experience in Walmart, how savings that they made can help them to
utilize those savings for their or their family’s betterment. This campaign
was very smartly portrayed to all their stakeholders and the emotional
approach was the touchpoint in this campaign. (wal-mart, 2013)
Magazine
Walmart publishtheir own magazine i.e. Walmart live better.Itis a lifestyle
magazine dedicated to families who shop at Walmart. The magazine
contains information related to recipes and ways to improve people’s
lifestyle.InUK, ASDA publishmagazine in the name of ASDA Good Living
magazine. It is packed with full of usefulfeatures like how to refurbishyour
house with a simple design hacks, quick, convenient and tasty recipes
from the food ingredients that customers usually have in their kitchen
cupboard.It also contains tons of easy fashion and beauty tips that are in
trend straight from the best beauty bloggers around the world. ASDA
magazine has very subtle cover page. Consumer can easily identify the
magazine by looking the cover page that this magazine is a mixture of
food, lifestyle, home and many more things (see figure 5).
7. 7
Sales promotion
Sales promotionis a type of marketing tool aim to lift sales temporarily. It
is used to introduce new product, attract more customers and clear out
stocks. In every Walmart store, this strategy is followed to create interest
in consumers to buy more products.
Point of sale:- Withthe upcoming Christmas festival, Walmart tries to kept
their point of sale area full of decorative with Christmas products such as
Christmas tree and decorations product. On the check-out area,
customers often purchase single items which are low in price e.g.: -
chocolates, recharge coupons and many such things. Walmart also
provide free samples whenever company introduces a new range of
product. So, Walmart has used the best of sales promotion to persuade
customers to buy more Walmart products.
Price off Promotion:Walmarthas always beensuccessful in implementing
this strategy. Company uses phrases and words such as Walmart price
guarantee, ‘Take the challenge’(see figure and heavily low price on a roll
down banner to communicate their point of differenceto their customers.
Another concept used by Walmart is ‘roll-back’ and instead of “o” in
terminology they have put smiley to convey as a happy message. The
company use on every discounted product shelf, so customer can catch
this term and easy to make them buy the product.
I believe the Wal-Mart has beenexceptionallywell in using such strategies
and they also focus on micro things which other companies are not that
effective in application and ultimately it reflects in their sales. In my
experience,with lots of varieties and good use of sale promotionstrategy,
my friends and I always end up buying products which is not necessarily
required and this happens with many people.
8. 8
Public relations
PR (Public Relations) is the function of generating goodwill toward a
company or organisation. It focuses on the relationship that are created
betweenan organisation and its public (Ogden,1998).PR is unpaid media
and uncontrollable and media may generate negative or positive PR for
an organisation.
Wal-Mart uses foundation programme to create good image in Public.
ASDA foundation programme provide grants of between £5000 and
£20000 to NGOs who develop stronger and better community across UK
by targeting social issues that are affecting local communities and it
attracts lots of media about such events (Theplace, n.d.). Active
communities network, for instance, who tackles unemployment issues by
providing youngsters a good knowledge and providing access to work
placements. ASDA foundation also sponsored many sports events such
as ‘Run for All’ in many places in UK. This encourage people to take part
either in running, walking, or volunteering and therefore making a
difference by helping hundreds of local charities with the money they
raised from this event. (ASDA, n.d.)
So, here ASDA is trying to create a good impressionon public and media
by giving a support to a good cause event and by providing financial
support to many NGOs for tackling social issues which lead to a Positive
public relation.
Social Media
Walmart has focused on social media to reach out their target audience
and potential customers to promote themselves. This is because social
media tool is one of the best marketing tool due to its consistent results.
Facebook
Walmart has made a huge effort in developing its Facebook presence in
this digital era. Most of Walmart’s posts contains about the product
suggestions with the price and it also has caption competitions to boost
9. 9
customer engagement with the company. With the development of
technology, Wal-Mart is trying to stand up front with using all the
technology. Wal-Mart host live videos to update their customerabout what
Wal-Mart is up to. With every festival Walmart changes their profile
structure with based on the festival, so to make consumer involvement
journey thrill and smooth. This is a great strategy to make consumer feel
about the festivalapproaching and highlighting the productsuggestionwill
induce them to buy product. With the Christmas approaching, Wal-Mart
post is mainly of Christmas products and families dinning together. So
Wal-Mart is communicating the ideal Christmas environment digitally.
Twitter
Walmart mainly uses Twitter to engage people and to satisfy them by
answering public questions or any grievances they had during buying
journey and post questions with certain topics including sports, caption
contest and request public for retweets if they agree with certain
statement. (Moth, 2013)
Walmart sees the value of twitter to engage with customers rather than
using just for marketing messages. Walmart initiated many campaign on
social media including on twitter for instance, greenlight campaigns for
veteran but many critics found a loophole (Baird, 2015).Walmart can link
their social campaign with commerce which they failed in doing so. First
mistake is uninspiring call to action: here Walmart invited people to visit
and participate to switch to green bulb to support veterans but Walmart
could have initiated well by posting images of green lights of their own
taking or volunteering in any vet campaign. Second mistake: not
connecting campaign to commerce. Wal-Mart urged to switch to green
light on twitter but it failed to provide the link from where customer can
buy(see figure 2). Walmart could have linked the campaign with the green
light product.And on their actual web-site there is a zero mention of green
light campaign on the product profile. So, customers couldn’t find the
campaign related content on the product content (see figure 3). Wal-Mart
should have linked the social campaign with the product properly as it
made people feel, are they in a right place?
10. 10
Pinterest
Wal-Mart is also presentin Pinterest media,which aimed more at product
ideas and promote green living. The product focused account has more
than 12000 followers. Walmart uses Pinterest to promote creative ideas
and specialoccasions suchas Easter, Christmas and many more.(Figure
1).
Walmart also launched its first ever competition on Pinterest, offering
them the chance to win a $500 giftcard bysharing the images of products
that made them to have more eco-friendly lives using hashtag
#walmartgreen and this competition fetched them hundreds of entries.
(Moth, 2013)
Qualitative research
ASDA arranged focus group researchin south east Londonto identify the
reason of stagnant in growth. The company found out that customers
value the price and quality of product that company is offering but
customers were founding difficulty in accessing ASDA stores.To resolve
the problem company recently Launched click and collect service at four
major underground stations.
This will allow customers to order online and can collect their order from
the station in evening. (Ruddick, 2013)
11. 11
MeasuringAdvertising Effectiveness
Magazine readership measure
As per, National Readership survey, ASDA is the most widely read
magazine title in UK. By combining data of print media readership and
web media readership,the NRS has come up with the figure for most of
the magazine titles in UK. ASDA Magazine readership (in thousands) in
print media and web media is 5803 and 5235 respectively.While the
runner up magazine ‘Your M&S’ magazine readership is 2259 and 4318
respectively.So here, ASDA magazine in terms of reachability and
readership is far ahead then the second most famous magazine.
(PressGazette,2013)
Testing
Media Research vehicle: TRAC (Transport Research Audience
Classification) is a database of commuter’s frequency in London
underground.With an annual sample size of 5000 who commutes London
underground frequently. But company is not relying solely on this vehicle
when setting marketing objectives. So, ASDA did some field test to get
some information and can cross reference what companyhas anticipated
from TRAC data
Pre testing- The pre-testing was done to identify where their target
audience travels using the Underground transportation and to increase
the online shopping amongst customers, ASDA selected two locations
for testing. ASDA used call to action method i.e. poster add to visit the
web-site with a unique code for £5 off on their first home shopping
purchase. As this approach helped company to capture details of
customer and delivery details will help them to understand whether they
are reaching their target audience.
Post testing- the posteradvert campaign had run for the period of month;
post-testing has done to further analyze whether the customers have
ordered from the web-site and the most preferred destination of their
target audience. Then company assessed the result of this campaign by
checking growth in sales and incremental in online shopping.
13. 13
Database marketing: - For companies like Wal-Mart where data are
generated in abundance, so database marketing can be a huge
prospectfor Wal-Mart. The primary reasonof not having loyalty card
is that ASDA believes that they are rewarding consumers everyday
by charging low prices. They give immediate reward unlike other
departmental stores like TESCO, where customers have to spend
vast amount of moneyto getdiscountvouchers that customers have
to use at some pointin future. But Loyalty card is not just the reward
to customer but it also helps the buying pattern of consumer and
can hold large data. Database marketing can help ASDA to identify
many things and it helps in finding who are their target customers.
Public relation: - Employees are company’s asset.Theyare the front
line of an organization and remains constantly touch with customer.
Many in retail see the company as tyrant. company discourage its
workers from participating in trade unions and been accused of
abusing employee’s right. Bad employee relation and high attrition
rate can create a negative impression in media and can hamper
public relations.
Communicate ‘quality’ aspect: - Many countries associate low price
as low quality like Japan. Wal-Mart’s uses their value preposition
‘low price’ as their differentiation and failed to communicate or
convey about the quality. There are many retailers in a market, for
instance, ALDI and LIDL where they provide goods at low price.
Wal-Mart must focus on portraying quality aspectin their marketing
communication as well.
Conclusion
14. 14
Advertising is a powerful tool but to create a great advantage of it the
marketing communication, advertising, media objectives must be linked
together.The role of marketing communicationis to differentiate company
from their competitors and persuade customers.
All and all, Wal-Mart has dealt with marketing and promotional element
successfullyto quite a good degreebutcompanymustfocus moreontheir
employee relation to create a positive public relation on public. For the
bettermentof the company, it should focus on quality aspectas well apart
from using their price as their only value proposition.
15. 15
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