BUSINESS

COMMUNICATION

Walmarts management plans, strategies

and their communication best practices
that are augmented with communication
techniques

Submitted by:

KHUSHBOO RAJ

SUKANYA ANAND

ANMOL BHATT

ALICE CHORARIA

YASH KOTENDRA

YASH JOSHI
Background

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the largest retailer in the world. Discovered in 1962, the company grew
endlessly because of its business philosophy, low prices, always, inherited from Sam Walton, the
founder of the company. In 1967, the company has managed to maintain 24 stores across Arkansas,
Oklahoma, and generated $12.6 million of sales. It was not until 1968 has the company expanded
outside of Arkansas and gained more profit from the rest of US regions.

The company is famous for many of its brilliant strategies in marketing, such as expanding to
small cities instead of large ones and providing lower prices. Among other strategies, this is a smart
decision that will generate customer loyalty and reduce the intensity of competition. Today, the
company operates approximately 38 stores with 1,500 employees and generates a sales number of
more than $44 million, annually. Wal-Marts merchandise is designed for local markets (The Wal-Mart
Story, 2007)

Communication Strategy in Wal-Mart Competitive Advantages

Wal-Mart is famous for a number of competitive advantages that excelled the company in their
markets. For instance, the effectiveness of Wal-Mart inventory distribution and storage management
is said to be unchallenged within the industry.

Managerial Communication Strategy in Wal-Mart Inventory Management

Wal-Mart inventory system is known as one of the most effective and efficient of all. Wal-Mart,
a single product is indexed over a thousand stores. Each store is designed and fine-tuned to meet local
needs rather than following a general policy. The authority to decide which items to display is given
to store managers, in order to provide the types of services that best suit local preferences.

Wal-Mart depends considerably to its communication strategy that creates managers with full
knowledge of corporate objectives and cultures.

Organizational and High-Tech Communication Strategy in Wal-Marts Operations

There is a standard electronic tracking system of the inventory at the point of sale. The
information is routed to the computerized inventory system. This automated inventory management
system lowers the costs of inventory and resulted easier analysis for future references of consumers
demand reviews. Wal-Mart uses satellite network to collect information regarding sales data and
analyze it in order to avoid overstocking or deep discounting

Although the corporate website fail to mention it, the practice of this operations strategy required
significant support of organizational communication strategy and furthermore, a technological
communication strategy. The lack of these communication strategies will make it impossible to
perform those operational activities elaborated .
Human Relations in Wal-Mart Distribution Network and Vendor Relations

Wal-Mart is highly supported with good communication management skills. Managing the
distribution system to achieve just-in-time standards require clear and un-tampered communication
channels between the company and its partners. In addition to investing millions of dollars for a high-
tech communication system, the company has also performed managerial training activities to ensure
that all components of the just-in-time system are available. In terms of vendor relations, Wal-Mart
has also invested considerably to establish a quality communication channel between the company
and its various vendors.

In-Store Communications

Communication in Walmart uses both downward and upward communication. The following
pattern is followed in downward communication. Downward Communication flows from supervisor
to employee, from policy makers to operating personnel, or from top to bottom on the organization
chart. As messages move downward through successive levels of the organization, they seem to get
larger. A simple policy statement from the top of the organization may grow into a formal plan for
operation at lower levels.

Consequently, in Walmart staff also uses uses communication that is feedback that goes back
up the hierarchy. Upward communication generally is feedback to downward
communication. Although necessary and valuable, upward communication does contain risks. When
management requests information from lower organizational levels, the resulting information
becomes feedback to that request. Employees talk to supervisors about themselves, their fellow
employees, their work and methods of doing it, and their perceptions of the organization. These
comments are feedback to the downward flow transmitted in both spoken and written form by group
meetings, procedures or operations manuals, company news releases, and the grapevine.

For internal employees

Two methods for manager to leading

1)Map style- for new employee, support and teach from leader directly

2)Compass Style- For skilful employee only tell their expectation and given some encouragement to
them

Communication with customers

Advertising

Traditionally, print and media advertising has represented the core of Walmart marketing strategy for
many years. However, in 2015, Walmart Vice President Wanda Young announced planned shift of the
main focus from the print advertising to the mobile marketing campaigns. Such a change in Walmart
marketing strategy is expected to target young people in general and Millennials in particular.

Viral marketing is another direction that is being extensively utilized by Walmart with varying levels of
success. For example, Walmart marketing video Work is a Beautiful Thing: Meet Patrick released in
2014 has attracted more than 1.2 million views in just six days with thousands of positive comments
and with evident positive implications on the brand image. Nevertheless, Walmart still uses print and
media advertising to a considerable extent and the company places advertisements on newspapers,
magazines and TV channels popular with the target customer segment.
Sales Promotion

Sales promotion is used by Walmart in an extensive manner. The retailer launches seasonal sales
promotions in a regular manner along with sales promotions in before and during public holidays and
other memorable days. Particularly, Black Friday is a massive sales promotion day for Walmart each
year eagerly anticipated by millions of customers.

Walmart maintains Daily Savings Center section in its official website where online and offline sales
promotion offers are announced. Sales promotion also has been adapted as an effective tool to
increase the sales of Sams Club segment of the business. Specifically, the emphasis of the Sams Club
team on making membership more rewarding helped drive net sales of USD58 billion and an increase
of more than 10 percent in membership income

Social media is one of the most important marketing channels for brands, as it offers unique
opportunities to communicate with customers.

Facebook

Walmart has put a huge amount of effort into developing its Facebook presence and has embraced
the timeline to showcase how the brand has grown over time.

On any given day it will post between two and five updates, including weekends, and most achieve
an impressive number of responses from its fans. Most of its posts achieve tens of thousands of
likes and hundreds of comments, with pictures of pets and children proving to be particularly
popular.
Twitter

Walmart mainly uses Twitter to post questions, with topics including sports, caption contests and
requests for retweets if users agree with a certain statement.

Most of its tweets only get a handful of responses, and it does a good job of answering those users.

Pinterest

Walmart appears to have two Pinterest accounts; one aimed more at product ideas and one
that promotes green living. The product-focused account has more than 12,000 followers and has
created 65 boards, while the green living account has just over 2,000 followers.

Written communication

Newsletter

Employee Newsletter is one internal communication skills that the corporation uses to recruit
employees. The Newsletter within Walmart is, one of the best vehicles for employee communication,
it normally offers many riches in the corporation.

Face-to-Face Communication

Despite the rise of emails and intranets, Walmart also values face-to-face sessions mostly
when it comes to keeping staff up-to-date.
Notice board

Notice board is one of the communication tools that is normally used by the Walmart. Even though,
notice board is perceived as an old method of passing messages, it is still usable, for it has its own
advantages and disadvantages.

Nevertheless, notice board is obvious but frequently misused medium for

communications. The biggest danger is allowing board to be cluttered up with uninteresting or out of
date material. But Walmart controls what goes on the board. The management has appointed
responsible staff member to service it by removing out of date materials or unauthorized notices.

Bulletins

Bulletins are essentially used as a mode of communication within the Walmart. It serves the
purpose of self service way of getting information, that is bulletins are stocked in the front desk of the
corporation so that the staff members can pick them to get the latest companys information.

Memo

Memo is used in Walmart as one of the channels of internal communication. It is used to

deliver important daily messages indicating how the company is fairing in its operations. It is also used
to pass messages of quick meetings that are called from time to time.

Memo acts as an informative channel within Walmart for it informs staff of the profits or
losses that occurs within the company in a specific given week.

E-mail

During the interviews, communication department officer informed me that e-mail is very much used
to communicate internally in various departments bringing very positive results in the companys
operation.

It has an advantage of a mailing list which has a clear ability to distribute information to staff at
a relatively low cost when compared to other media investments such as direct mail or printed
newsletters, it is less expensive.

It is instant, as opposed to a mailed advertisement; an email arrives in a few seconds or minutes.

General Manager of the Corporation can reach staff members through email whereby he
receives email communications feedback.

Over half of Walmart staff users check or send email as a way of easy internal communication.

Specific types of interaction with management can trigger other messages to be automatically
delivered.

Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship between the employees and the
employers.

Sending e-mails with the purpose of informing new employees of how the company is
performing after they joined it.
References

Annual Report (2015) Walmart Stores Inc.

Boxall, A. (2015) Walmart shifts away from print advertising and towards mobile to better target
Millennials Moby Affiliates, Available at: http://www.mobyaffiliates.com/blog/walmart-shifts-away-
from-print-advertising-and-towards-mobile-to-better-target-millennials/

Stanley, T.L. (2014) Touching Viral Ad From Walmart Confuses Haters Mashable, Available at:
http://mashable.com/2014/03/20/walmart-touching-viral-ad-patrick/#oc8_lDH5W5qb

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