Walmart Marketing Case

It is important to identify the right group of customers and to determine how to market your product to them in the right way. The criterion chosen for my organization is Demographic and behaviors or psychographics. Demographics help in connecting with the customer and include age, gender, location, and household size to name a few. Behaviors or psychographics provides a better understanding of the customer. These criterions makes market research information easier as it is often organized into these categories. (Armstong, 2007)

Wal-Mart has moved a step further by segmenting the unique value seekers who shop its stores. The goal is to better understand the motivation behind their shopping habits. Wal-Mart has partitioned its 200 million customers into three core consumer groups. The three groups are Brand Aspirational which is people with low incomes who are fixated on brand names like Kitchen Aid, Price-Sensitive Affluent who is wealthier shoppers who love deals, and Value-Price Shoppers who in which are those which like low prices and can't afford much more. The research reinforced the view that Wal-Mart's most powerful traffic driver was low prices; it also found that customers place a high value on brands. With a goal of expanding its branded positions, Wal-Mart is creating teams each with a marketing executive and merchandising executive to tackle five "power" categories: Food, Entertainment, Apparel, Home Goods and Pharmacy.

We can understand individual lifestyles and patterns of behavior, which in turn affect their buying behavior and decision-making processes. On this basis, we can also identify similar product and/or media usage patterns. By understanding the motivations customers derive from their purchases it is possible to have an insight into the benefits they seek from product use. Behaviors or psychographics provides a better understanding of the customer while using demographics helps in connecting with the customer (Armstong, 2007)

Data about customer purchases and transactions provides scope for analyzing who buys what, when, how often, how much they spend, and through what transactional channel they purchase. This provides very rich data for identifying 'profitable' customer segments.