Essay Sample on Walmart: The Largest US Multinational Retail Firm

Walmart Inc. is a US multinational retail firm that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount stores, e-retail, and grocery stores (Pratap, 2020). Its headquarters are found in Bentonville, Arkansas. It was founded by Sam Walton in 1962 and was incorporated in1969. Walmart has 11,503 stores and clubs in 28 countries with different names. According to Fortune Global 500, Walmart is the largest company by revenue approximated at $541.41 billion (Chan, 2011). Also, it is regarded as the largest private employer, with 2.2 million employees across the globe. The Walton family controls the company. It is the most profitable retailer in America.

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Walmart offers high-quality merchandise at a lower price, which is vital it maintaining its highest position with its efficiency, more robust logistics, and supply chain management. Initially, the company started with physical retail stores, but later in 2000, it moved to e-retailing. The company's slogan "always low price" and its customer-centric approach is the key to topping the e-commerce industry.

Social media marketing is an essential element in the 21st businesses. In most cases, it is analyzed as a tactic of effective communication of a business. Social media marketing scope provides a range of opportunities to explore marketing culture, which includes poles of modernism and conservatism (Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017). Social media marketing structure majorly depends on the networks. It can be defined as an interdisciplinary and cross-functional concept that uses social media in combination with other communication channels to achieve the organizational goal by creating value to significant stakeholders (Felix, Rauschnabel and Hinsch, 2017).

Walmart's social media strategy objectives are to create awareness to its customers and potential customers on its product discount as compared to its competitors and enhance its reputation (Pratap, 2020). The interaction with customers on social media has proven to be pivotal to its marketing strategy. The company's prominent presence in social media has been significant in its growth. It has over 34 million followers on Facebook, 210,000 on twitter, and over 33,000 on Instagram. Walmart's goal for social media is to attract and maintain its potential customers at all costs. The social media platform creates an awareness of the firm's customers about its products and available discount offers. According to the company's senior director, the objective of the use of social media marketing is to enhance, protect, and defend the company's reputation.

The company has invested heavily in Facebook. This can be proved by the number of followers on Facebook. The company is trying to sell its reputation and changing people's hearts and minds. Its reason to be more active on Facebook is that its target customers are more active on Facebook, and also the platform is more popular on the globe. Walmart depends on the more than a million user-generated content, mostly on Facebook and Twitter. It has enjoyed more than 60000 customer engagement daily on social media. It claims ten times Return On Investments (ROI) (Pratap, 2020).

Walmart company has trained and encouraged its employees to story tell about its existence and product scope. The effort is aimed to solidify the organization's brand and values that have been in existence over the past 50 years (Pratap, 2020). It also establishes the guideline for customer engagement. The platform also ensures information about the company is shared effectively to the community and monitors customer satisfaction toward its products.

Walmart has prioritized on assigning each social media a specific purpose. For that reason, the role of Twitter is asking the customers the fundamental question, "what is happening." Every store has its own account aimed to provide essential information about its incentives and significant activities. Facebook is prioritized to communicating certain values that are happening every day at both the national level and locally within the stores. This strategy aids the organization to frequently engage with its customers and segmentation of the audience's interests.

With the company experiencing growth in its social media followers, more people are familiar with the company's brands. Therefore, the company is unlimited to the usual royal customers. Every content the company post in its social media provides an opportunity to gain new customers. The social media marketing strategy has saved the company costs on advertising; hence the effort is focused on the growth of the business. The marketing strategy has been ranked as the most effective and cost-efficient in creating brand awareness.

Walmart has developed a phone application to reduce web browsing, taking lessons from its primary competitor Amazon. The app is ranked second (after amazon). Walmart's social media marketing strategy has achieved this result. It made potential customers aware of the existence of the shopping application. Social media account for approximately 50% of the application downloads.

Most people prefer doing business with other people than companies. Brands that are interactive by sharing contents, posting statuses, and commenting on social media, it personifies the business. Marketers claim that developing a good relationship with customers enables a business to enjoy more profits on its sale. This leads to a higher conversion rate. With Walmart putting their brands in an environment where people are sharing, liking, and talking about, its conversion rate on the existing traffic has been greatly boosted.

Most customers are more satisfied knowing their comments and posts on the company's page receives a personalized response than automated replies. Acknowledging each customer's feedback shows the company values its customers and provide a better customer experience.

One of the most obvious advantages of social getting marketplace insight. The insights reports on customers' interests and needs that are vital to a business in understanding the industry. Social media is used as a marketing research tool to analyze the market segment of a specific brand. The information extracted is used to measure the conversion rate of the company to find a better combination of resources that can optimize the generation of resources. Walmart should employ this technique to satisfy its customer's specific needs and requirements.

As much as Walmart is enjoying some benefits of social media marketing, it also experiences some challenges on the same. For instance, the company receives a number of negative feedback on its social media platforms. This affects the new potential customer checking on its page. Having too many negative feedbacks significantly impacts the business's future marketing plans and efforts. This poses a significant challenge for the company to adapt and find a suitable solution.

Another challenge Walmart is facing on utilizing social media platforms is vulnerability to potential embarrassment (Baird, 2020). If the company's contents are not properly managed, it can cause embarrassment and place it in an awkward position. This calls for the social media content of the business to be regulated to ensure only useful and educative content is shared with the public to maintain a positive reputation. Therefore Walmart should do research on the potential effect of the content before posting on social media to the public.

According to Dan Gingiss, when the company interacts with the customer on one on one basis on social media, it makes them more royal. Royal customers tend to stay longer on the business and refers to their friends (Gingiss, 2017). Following the above reason, Walmart has prioritized retaining its customers by giving attention to each of their posts and comments on its social media platforms. This will help in building a positive reputation worldwide. The company should be devoted to customer satisfaction as it takes time to respond to customer's comments even though it might be complaints.

Although social media is considered a better marketing method, a lot of time is spent on creating new content, posting, and engaging customers. For this reason, the company wastes more time monitoring and maintaining its social media content. On the other hand, trying to stop posting will impact the relationship with the customers (Baird, 2020). To adapt to this challenge, social media content creation, posting, and monitoring should be outsourced to a more experienced firm on the matter.

Walmart's social media strategy is to use its online platform to engage its customers and generate sales at a higher rate. The business communicates daily with its customers on various social media networks about their programs and products. The use of social media has enabled the e-retailer to survive in the competitive market and gain popularity among its competitors. The business has stayed true of its purpose and consistently strives to offer its products at a lowered price to its loyal customers. The vital component of this achievement is the use of social media marketing strategy they opted to undertake. By 2014, Walmart had achieved a 4.7 million customer engagement rate more than any other e-retailing business.

References

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P.A., and Hinsch, C., 2017. Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, pp.118-126.

Chan, A. ed., 2011. Walmart in China. Cornell University Press.

Pratap, A., 2020. Walmart Social Media Marketing Strategy. [online] Notesmatic.com. Available at: <https://notesmatic.com/2020/02/walmart-social-media-marketing-strategy/> [Accessed 12 March 2020].

Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P., and Hinsch, C., 2017. Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research, 70, pp.118-126.

Gingiss, D., 2017. Winning At Social Customer Care. 1st ed. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform;

Baird, N., 2020. Three Social Media Mistakes Walmart Is Making Right Now. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/nikkibaird/2015/11/09/three-social-media-mistakes-walmart-is-making-right-now/#147b50682cd6> [Accessed 12 March 2020].