Retail Store Essay Samples

Executive Summary

Even though, Wal-Mart has branches across the globe, being an American Inc. it has most of its branches in the country. The retail outlets are purposefully meant to distribute the electronics, foods, and other products to the customers. More specifically, these retail stores across the country are to ensure convenience of shopping for the customers, as well as their suppliers. This paper specifically, discusses the Wal-Mart retail customers’ profile, unique competitive positioning, pricing strategy, and sales approach.

Wal-Mart’s Customers’ Profile

Just as noted by McMillan (2012), Wal-Mart segments its customers in four market segments. They serve the geographic, demographic, behavioral, and psychographic segments with Apparel, Books, Electronic, Movies & Video Games, Toys and Grocery among other many products (Kerin et al., 2011). More importantly, Wal-Mart’s customers are those that are price sensitive and love shopping in retail outlets that charge lowest prices for the quality products that they need. In fact, McMillan (2012) states that, the average US Wal-Mart customer’s income is usually below the national average and most of them do not own any bank account. As such, they remain very sensitive to higher utility costs of products including gas prices.
The retail segmentation caters for the six demographic segments including the affluent, Hispanics, African-Americans, Suburbanites, empty-nesters, and the rural residents (McMillan, 2012). To attract all these target segments, Wal-Mart uses a simple slogan of saving money for the people to live better lives (Kerin et al., 2011). It also serves the wealthier shoppers (Price-sensitive effluents) that likes saving money through good deals. Besides, the retail also deal with the “value-price shoppers) who like purchasing quality products at low prices and cannot afford much more (Kerin et al., 2011).

Unique Competitive Positioning

Wal-Mart faces stiff competition from the other market players such as G-Mart retail, which directly sell similar products to those of the organization. As such, Wal-Mart adopts a mixture of differentiation, cost leadership, product display, and pricing strategies to gain the competitive edge against the other competitors in the market (Kerin et al., 2011). Based on the nature of its customer base, the organization charge relatively low price to the products combined with superior services that attract the attention of the mass moving population be it in the cities or rural areas.

Wal-Mart’s Pricing Strategy

Wal-Mart is unique in the retail store business. Being influenced by the characteristics of its target segments, it charges penetrating prices to its products. This special pricing strategy has been able to fill the niche in its customer's base perception (Kerin et al., 2011). In almost all the products that Wal-Mart trades in including electronics are very competitive that without unique pricing strategy any retail may be forced to close down its stores. This is the reason Wal-Mart differentiates its products by selling them to customers through exceptional prices that the customers can afford.
According to Kim et al. (2006), most customers who are price sensitive love lower prices and get attracted by the relatively low priced products. The organization does not only charge low prices for their products, but also ensures the quality and the value of the good is retained. Price sensitive customers usually purchase products of value to them as well as create brand loyalty for high-quality products.

Sales Approach

Wal-Mart retail adopts a sales strategy that outstands those of the competitors. The retail stocks differentiated products that suit its customer base. The varieties of products are critically and well displayed on the shelves that attract the customers to make their purchase. The retail store tailors products to the customer groups based on the regional alignments. This enables customers to get access to the products that are popular within their locations. Ideally, regional preferences of items are an important element in sales that an organization must consider to make huge sales (Kerin et al., 2011).
The localized approach adopted by the organization in sales enables the management to match the needs of the price sensitive customers. On the other hand, the retail is quite sensitive to fashions and new trends in electronic products and cosmetics. Their product mix in the stores reflects the preferences of customers based on the location of the store. For instance, in this store, there are less apparel for children and an expanded pharmacy area to reflect the kind of products that the customers regularly purchase. Subsequently, the retail outlet has a flexible layout to accommodate the most weekend farmers who visit the town for fresh and fast food stuff. In general, the Wal-Mart store looks quite different and spacious for the customers to shop rather than the other retail outlets that stock the same products (McMillan, 2012).

References

Kerin, R.A., Hartley, S.W., Berkowitz, E.N., & Rudelius, W. (2011). Marketing (10th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kim, S., Jung, T., Suh, E., & Hwang, H. (2006). Customer segmentation and strategy development based on customer lifetime value: A case study. Expert Systems With Applications. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2005.09.004
McMillan, T. (2012). The American way of eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, farm fields, and the dinner table. New York: Scribner.