Overview
Stores in the US retail industry are active in their promotional undertakings. The aim of the promotional strategy is to enable business brands to be more visible. In the promotional strategy, the stores have utilized various basic techniques to reach the customers. The promotion techniques include advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotions. This paper will examine the promotional strategies of the Wal-Mart and the Wm Morrison in their save-on-food (good) and save-on-one-day (bad) coupons, respectively.
Selecting the promotion
The save-on-food promotional strategy by Wal-Mart and the Wm Morrison’s save-on-one-day are good and bad, respectively. In the Wal-Mart’s promotional strategy, there are coupons for customers who buy certain amount of food from the store, and everyone is a winner. There component of the campaign for the save-on-food promotion is web and store. The promotion is on the company’s website besides visible boards in the store.
On the other hand, the Wm Morrison’s save-on-one-day promotion is presented in the form of coupons which are only valid for one day, despite the fact that most customers rarely visit the store every day. This means that the promotion limits customers to use the coupon within one day. The save-on-one-day coupon is promoted with a well-designed promotional strategy. To promote the coupon, the store has deployed many advertisement mechanisms like word of mouth, publicizing through leaflets, online advertisement through its website, announcement of the promotional offer, promotion of the use of local media, social media and billboards at the entrance of the store (Bowden 69).
Write-up
I found the two promotions from the Wal-Mart and Wm Morrison stores. The two promotional coupons were at an end-of-aisle promotion. The price of the food items qualified for the coupons were $50 and $70 for the Wal-Mart and Wm Morrison, respectively. In each case, there were no competing product promotions since they both targeted customers buying food products. For Wal-Mart, the save-on-food promotion can be classified as consumer since it targets direct purchase of the food products. For the Wm Morrison, the save-on-one-day promotional strategy can also be classified under the consumer promotion (Bowden 70).
Promotional platforms
The promotional platforms target shoppers in the stores interested in food products. The two stores have invested in both mainstream and social media (twitter, Facebook, Instagram) advertising to increase awareness of the products. The major objective of advertising is to increase the awareness of the food products offered by the two stores to the target users. Besides, the secondary objective of the promotional strategies is to stimulate and retain the customer loyalty (Rhim and Lee 160).
The two supermarkets aspire to build their business models around affordable pricing and unrivaled freshness. The supermarkets function on the elements of being exemplary in product freshness while charging the most competitive prices in the promotions. The vision supports the Business to Customer (B2C) strategy for sustainable business.
As large supermarkets, the two stores have created a sustainable business through their dynamic style of product promotion. The stores operate on the business pillars such as persuasive merchandise, balanced business channels, and establishment of assessment in service delivery through their promotional coupons. These strategies are aimed at ensuring continuous expansion and customer satisfaction. The possible costs of putting these promotions are coupon printing, designing, and advertisement (Tynan and McKechnie 513).
Suggested improvements
The Wal-Mart store may improve on its save-on-food promotion by adding social media as one of its platforms. The Wm Morrison store may improve on its save-on-one-day by extending the expiry period of the promotion to appeal to more customers.
Works Cited
Bowden, John. “The Process of Customer Engagement: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Marketing Theory & Practice, 17.1(2009): 63-74. Print.
Rhim, Hosus and Conrad Lee. “Assessing potential threats to incumbent brands: new product positioning under price competition in a multi segmented markets.” International Journal of Research in Marketing 22.1 (2005): 159-182. Print.
Tynan, Caroline and Sandra McKechnie. “Experience Marketing: A Review and Reassessment.” Journal of Marketing Management 25.6 (2008): 501-527. Print