Wal-Mart Asda

Wal-Mart вЂ" ASDA in the UK

Two international marketing objectives

• Increase overall market share in the UK with their company ADSA by 15% by the end of the year

• Increase overall sales in the supermarket industry by 1 billion dollars in the next year

Communication Strategy

In assessing the current communication opportunities for the supermarket giant, Wal-Mart, you can look at their current audience, and their trends. The general audience for the Wal-Mart company can be very general in that it is a supermarket, that caters for the general public, rather then just a specific audience that most other businesses will tend to target, making finding a specific audience much harder.

The general audience however could be seen as someone more female skewed, with most of the shoppers being in their mid 20’s to late 30’s. They are their for their shopping for both personal and gift based purchases, that meaning that they are there to shop for themselves, but are also there to shop for gifts for their partners or for general gifts to their family and friends. The second largest audience could be seen as males, also between the same ages as the females, and also there to find general gifts, both for themselves and also for family and friends. Because of the variety of shoppers that do come to the Wal-Mart stores, it’s hard to exactly pin point one specific audience for marketing to them and specifically one target market.

The types of competition that are involved in the supermarket industry, similar to that of ASDA are all based around already well established supermarket chains in the UK. These other supermarkets include, Tesco (the current market leader in supermarkets, owning over 30% of the total market) Sainsbury and Morrisons (both of which are somewhat smaller then ASDA, but still strong enough to keep their own in the industry.)

In regards to the competition, ASDA is placed around the top, not quite the number 1 supermarket chain in the UK (as Tesco hold that position) but still own a large chunk of the market share (16%) making them second overall in the supermarket industry, showing that they have an already well established foundation in the UK.

Their biggest competition was all based around their rivals Tesco, another UK based supermarket chain. They started well before ASDA had entered the market and have many more stores in the UK and Scotland then ASDA have in the UK. These are the biggest customers that ASDA need to market for and gain, as they are more loyal to the Tesco name, over the ASDA brand.

Communication Resources

ASDA, being apart off the Wal-Mart family, has lots of money backing, and is somewhat able to experiment with their communication strategies. The type of media vehicles that could possibly be used by ASDA as their main marketing tools would best be done in an IMC strategy.

The types of vehicles that were used together in order to work with each other would best include, television campaigns and also include and advertising catalogue or brochure that goes along with what was done in the television commercial. These two driving vehicles will help to gain more brand awareness in that consumers will see the ad, remember that they had these commercials and also that they had their own catalogue.

In regards to financial resources, and the amount of money that they have at their disposal in order to fill their communication objectives, they have well over the required amount as their parent company is Wal-Mart, one of the biggest companies in the US, and around the world. Making for an almost impossible amount to put onto what they could spend, as it would go off into the millions and millions.

It’s bound that ASDA already have well established agency affiliation with many other organisations that help with advertising and distribution channels. These agencies are likely to have worked with ASDA before on previous campaigns and are more likely to know the type of things that work for ASDA, and the types of things that don’t work with their company.

In regards to human resources, the company has a large number of stores all around the UK, so personnel will not be so much of a problem, especially with how large of a company they are. Placing people in different roles and positions in the company will not be as big a problem as it would for a lesser company. This makes arrangements for hiring and placing people in different marketing positions fairly easy.

Set Communication Objectives

The types of communication objectives include:

• Creating brand awareness in terms of recall вЂ"