Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is an excellent example where hard work and determination enabled a small businessman, Sam Walton to grow from a single store to become the largest retailer around the globe. The rationale behind choosing Wal-Mart is that it stands as one of the retailers that heavily invested and focused on customer retention through the provision of better services and cheap products (Vance, 1994).

The success of Wal-Mart is largely the result of its effective strategic planning due to which it has managed to retain a part of the public population as its loyal customers. It has managed to earn a profit while providing the best services to customers and its business has come out to stand strong in a highly competitive environment where it managed to attract the customers despite the numerous options available to them. This was all due to its efficient implementation of a well-planned and structured retail strategy focused on the goals and objectives of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart came out successful because it had a strategic plan which it was willing to adopt (Fishman, 2006).

Among the various special characteristics that Wal-Mart was able to employ to attract its customers; these included generating orders that tended to be small in size but large in numbers. Conforming to the needs of a wide variety of customers by keeping a large range of goods was another measure. Others steps included an excellent inventory management, and targeting the mix of the customers (Fishman, 2006).

Through the use of social media, Wal-Mart was able to develop strong relationship with its customers. Wal-Mart has gained real economic growth by investing heavily in social media. Through this strategy, Wal-Mart was successful in engaging customers who came out to be more loyal in buying their products. The level of engagement by Wal-Mart in media has seen an upward rise which is something completely different from its earlier strategies when it opened its first discount store in 1962. Wal-Mart is now a global brand, and employs social media to spread its image among the customers. Wal-Mart developed communication channels for its customers on the television, radio, mail and internet. These mediums were used to convey the value that customers would derive by shopping in Wal-Mart stores. An example was the concept of self servicing kiosk; which allows the customer to learn about Wal-Mart's products, sales, the out-of-stock products, and the site of its stores. This service enables Wal-Mart to make its customers aware of its services, and therefore enables it to retain its customers (Belch, 2003).

The “mass media, niche media, addressable media, and interactive media" can be referred to as communication channels which sends the messages of the company to a large portion of the public (Duncan, 2004). Wal-Mart initially capitalized on this same strategy and managed to reach diverse viewers. Wal-Mart used television as a primary source of sending out its messages to the consumers. However, since the late 1990s, it started focusing more on the use of social media to develop its relationship with customers, and build a ...