Walmart’s Online Marketing Strategies in India

2. What is Your Research Question?

The chief aim of the study would be to examine how the Walmart Company may advance its popularity and profitability in India by employing various online marketing strategies. The research aims generally at examining and presenting the various online marketing platforms that the company may employ, and evaluates their pros and cons of such strategies. The following research questions simplifies the cpope and specific objectives of the researc.

I. How do online marketing influence the profitability and consumer awareness of the business’ products and services? What theories support the arguments?

II. Which are the most commonly applied online marketing platforms by organisations? What are the pros and cons of such strategies?

III. How can Walmart Inc. use the marketing strategies in (2) above to expand its penetration into Indian Market, thus improving its popularity and profits realised from the economy?

3. One MAIN Reason for Choosing this Question (topic)?

Globally, many firms promotes their products and services online, since the introduction of the internet. This marketing strategy has caused the international recognition of major firms in many economies, including the UK, India and USA. The main reason for selecting the topic of online marketing is due to the fast-growing rate of online sales in the Indian economy. In order to penetrate well into the Indian economy, firms need to invest more in online sales and marketing strategies, which enables them to acquire a reasonable market share. A critical analysis of the company’s progress in India presents that the firm invests more on establishing retail and wholesale stores, which is against the majority preference of the Indian people. However, Indian citizens are appealed more by businesses that adopts the online sales strategy. There exists an interdependence between online sales and online marketing. The research aims ad identifying the various online marketing strategies that Walmart may apply for it to reach out to more residents in India and improve it low popularity and profitability in the country.

Previous research justifies the use of online marketing by presenting the various benefits it brings to the businesses (Cobb, Brookover and Cobb 2017, p.130). Among the identified benefits of the strategy includes improved sales, maximizing business competition, improving consumer satisfaction and reaching out to more customers in a cheaper way (Cobb, Brookover and Cobb 2017, p.129). The research improves one’s knowledge concerning various effective marketing strategies. In addition, the research enables one to understand the influence that online marketing can cause to the business’ operations, effectiveness, and profitability as well as consumer brand awareness.

4. Which theory/theories you will be using?

Market Segmentation Theory

The theory requires organizations to segregate their markets, with the intentions of maximising their interactions with the customers. The online marketing succeeds in segregating the market and promote the interactions by creating one segregated market (Cross, J. and Rudelius 2015, p.100). The adoption of the online marketing platforms enables firms to interact closely with the customers, thus personalizing the sales and service delivery. More so, the firm is able to clarify issues to the customers, give them immediate feedback and get to explain to them the uniqueness, importance and usage of the products. The answering of the customers’ queries leaves them motivated, thus the firm is able to maintain customers. The theory thus justifies the application of the online marketing approach. The satisfaction and retaining of customers translate to more sales, thus resulting in improved profits of the organisations.

The Network Theory

The network theory backs up the market segregation theory, by citing the need for healthy interaction between the customers and the business. To maximize the interactions, Weimar Company needs to apply more online or digital marketing strategies (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014, p.704). Networking improves firms’ popularity, as the chances of customers being in the encounter of at least one online marketing platforms are very high. Averagely, most people in this digital era uses at least three marketing platforms. The theory promotes the research topic by justifying than businesses uses online marketing forums to penetrate into various economies (Grabher, G. and König 2017, p.121). It is automatic that increase in the firms’ popularity improves sales and thus the firms are able to generate more incomes.

The Generational Theory

The generational theory holds that consumers who are born at the same generation, which is defined to imply a twenty years period, demonstrates similar attitudes and behaviours, due the experience of similar views and occasions in the world (Garrick, Pendergast and Geelan 2017, p.50). Globally, most of the consumers belong to the digital era. Therefore, marketers need to identify the online sites that the prospective consumers used and display their products in the most attractive manner. For instance, the young generations mostly use social media platforms, some of which refreshes and update their pages daily or hourly. Therefore, the firm that intends to promote goods mostly used by the young people needs to maintain social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter, among other platforms. In addition, forms may advertise their commodities through google ads, Groupon and Foursquare. The theory justifies the topic, by encouraging firms to establish the most influential online marketing forums, and use them to generate more consumer awareness, sales and profits (Garrick, Pendergast and Geelan 2017, p.55).

5. What is Your Data and Data Source?

To maximize data and evidence collection, the research applies both the primary and secondary data. The research gathers secondary data from peer-reviewed sources and Weimer Company financial reports. The literary sources equip one with knowledge concerning the relationship between online marketing and profitability and productivity of businesses (Tiago and Veríssimo 2014, p.703). The research also aims at gathering primary data through questionnaires and survey.

6. What are Your Main Variables? (not necessarily required for a qualitative study)

The research’s independent variables include online marketing strategies, business strategic planning, consumer generation, satisfaction factors and behaviours and the size of online platforms users. On the other hand, the research has business performance and business popularity as the dependent variable.

7. What Specific Method(s) You Will be using?

The research adopts a mixed method approach, as it maximizes on the data collection (Sekaran and Bougie 2019, p.9). The method adopts both the qualitative and quantitative data, thus providing substantial evince for the analysis and conclusion. By use of the mixed approach, one overcomes the limitations of one of the concept by applying the other concept. Therefore, the mixed approach has few limitations, as opposed to the use of either qualitative or quantitative approaches. This improves the reliability of the data collected (Creswell and Creswell 2017, p.3).

For the collection of the qualitative data, the research incorporates a questionnaire, which includes both open-ended and closed questions. The questionnaire would be issued to at least 50 customers, who will be asked questions concerning the popularity of Walmart Company via the internet. The open-ended questions aim at gathering consumer attitudes towards the use of online marketing strategies by the company. The questions also aim at examining the average number of online platforms the customers use per day and the frequency at which they visit such sites. Concerning the qualitative data, the research examines the number of sales that the company makes online by observing and recording the business’ sales. Data analysis linear regression and compilation of the qualitative data, which promotes the compilation of a comprehensive conclusion.

8. Why You have Chosen this Method?

The mixed method approach is the most preferred research method, as it maximizes on data collection. The approach, as earlier mentioned, adopts both the qualitative and qualitative data (Creswell and Creswell 2017, p.3). The research examines two effects of online marketing, the business profitability and popularity. Popularity concept is mostly examined using the qualitative research, as it mostly applies to the attitudes and attraction of the consumers to the business. On the other hand, profitability is mostly numerical, which must have quantitative data. Therefore, the research covers both aspects of the study.

Bibliography

Cobb, N.K., Brookover, J. and Cobb, C.O., 2015. Forensic analysis of online marketing for electronic nicotine delivery systems. Tobacco control, 24(2), pp.128-131.

Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D., 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications, p.3.

Cross, J. and Rudelius, W., 2015. Tradeoffs in Industrial Market Segmentation: Theory and Practice. In Proceedings of the 1993 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 99-102). Springer, Cham.

Garrick, B., Pendergast, D. and Geelan, D., 2017. Through the Lens of Generational Theory. In Theorising Personalised Education (pp. 47-60). Springer, Singapore.

Grabher, G. and König, J., 2017. Performing network theory? Reflexive relationship management on social network sites. In Networked Governance (pp. 121-140). Springer, Cham.

Sekaran, U. and Bougie, R., 2016. Research methods for business: A skill building approach. John Wiley & Sons, pp.9-15.

Tiago, M.T.P.M.B. and Veríssimo, J.M.C., 2014. Digital marketing and social media: Why bother?. Business Horizons, 57(6), pp.703-708.