Target Markets of Walmart and Best Buy

Best Buy and Walmart are 2 of the most famous multinational retail corporations. The products of Walmart include hundreds of consumable items, while Best Buy mainly concentrates on consumer electronics. With more than thousands of operating stores, they reach millions of consumers on a daily basis. Surely, the role of customers is huge behind the success of these companies, and accurately targeting the right ones makes this success even bigger. So, who are the target markets of Walmart and Best Buy? Why do these companies put the most emphasis on these segments? 

Let’s start our journey by discussing Walmart, especially some of their marketing strategies and campaign examples.

One of the company’s recent successful campaigns is their new approach to the commercials of Walmart Grocery Pickup. For those who are not familiar with the way their grocery pick up works, it’s a function in Walmart’s app/website, where you place your orders online and alert the associates your arrival time and pick-up area. The associate prepares your products and gets them ready while you are on your way to the store. 

The new campaign uses famous cars from cartoons and movies. These nostalgic vehicles are used to add magical colors to the moment of Walmart associate loading the car with groceries.

The marketing team has chosen those iconic cars, so it will instantly catch the customers’ eye. The combination of cartoons and real-life situations is a very unique and effective approach when done accurately.

For this reason, Walmart collaborated with Hollywood studios to get permission for usage of these vehicles and make them look like exactly the ones in the films. This creates emotional associations inside the potential consumer’s head, which in turn creates interest in the commercial and the brand. This option offers great value especially for the people who have a hectic working routine and try to minimize their time spent on tiny everyday problems. 

Moving on let’s speak about their targeting strategy and discuss their slogan.

While saving time is a newly added value for Walmart, saving money has been one of their key drivers in success for more than a decade. Since 2007, the company uses “Save money. Live better” slogan, which is a vital part of their mass targeting strategies. 

Saving money directly leads to living better. This especially refers to low to mid-income people who are the mass market. Therefore, the products of Walmart vary from low to mid-price/quality which meets their target audience’s expectations.

As a result, by using the opportunity of buying a product on a comparatively lower price, Walmart consumers can use their daily assembled money on something they’ve been wishing to have for a long time or something that would improve the quality of their lives. 

Of course, for a big company such as Walmart, mass marketing strategies are must do steps, but just like any other huge companies, Walmart also has some main target markets that they put relatively more emphasis.

To discover their main target market, I’m going to discuss one of their famous commercials. 

The commercial displays an episode where the beginning of joyful summer days is about to happen. A middle-aged lady, calls out the whole family to announce the big start of the summer and everybody gets cheered up.

The products in the commercial as most probably you already understood, are bought from a Walmart store. Moreover, here Walmart didn’t divert from the theme of its slogan.

This is expressed when at the end of the commercial the full angle of the yard is shot, while the background voice says “Save money. Live better”, emphasizing that all of the products on the display are bought at very affordable prices.

The lady on the scene (with a white t-shirt), is a devoted member of her family. An ordinary lady who would sacrifice a lot of things for her loved ones. With the help of the other lady next to her, she organized this family fun with great love and dedication. In the end, she just stands there and watches the show going on. 

From this lady’s personality traits, the way she is dressed, and the type of party she organized we can state that this lady belongs to the Traditionalist segment, thus Walmart tries to attract more and more consumers who belong to this segment.  

Who are Traditionalists?

Lifestyle and Values

Traditionalists are married, middle-aged people.

The key focus of Traditionalists is guiding their family through life. They think it’s their main duty to protect their family and make sure that the family is in a strong position. They achieve their goals by assigning tasks for family members and by raising the kids properly which includes educating them, teaching morals, and discipline.

They tend to have a peaceful, stable, and well-arranged life. So, to ensure that they believe one should be hard-working and honest and that’s their exact attitude in the workplace. They like to work in an ethical environment where they can be a part of a ‘team’ and a dedicated member of it. 

Attitude to Shopping 

While enjoying any kind of shopping, they have a practical outlook on it. They prefer comfort over style and quantity is preferred over quality. They like trying new things and brands, but they start to do it a little late compared to early adopters. 

They are bargain hunters, thus like to shop when there are special offers and discounts. They mainly prefer downmarket products for their own usage, but may pay a high amount of money to buy premium brands for their kids. 

Some interesting tips about Traditionalists

• Their preferred way of spending evenings is having a quiet night at home by cooking or by watching TV, as they don’t like going to entertainment places. 
• Adventures and traveling don’t interest them much. They don’t read a lot, and are not interested in foreign cultures, but want their kids to be, so they buy a lot of books for them.
• Traditionalists are below average internet users because they find it difficult to adapt to new technologies and changes.   
• Their primary source of information is TV. Most of them are heavily dependent on TV and may turn it on as soon as they get home. 

Now let’s speak about some interesting Walmart facts and stories that you probably haven’t heard before. 

1. Walmart has the largest workforce in the world. Just imagine! 2.2 million Employees. It’s more than a population of a minimum of 10 European countries.
2. The largest Walmart store is nearly 260,000 square feet. This huge Supercenter was opened in 2008 and is located in Albany’s Crossroad Commons. It’s approximately 25% larger than the other locations. 
3. If Walmart was a country, it would be ranked as one of the countries with the most GDP. Yes! As of 2017 Walmart’s annual revenue was 485 million dollars, which is more than Belgium’s GDP. If Walmart was a country, it would be ranked as 23rd country with most gross domestic product. 

Let’s move on to discuss the next giant, Best Buy.

Since 2017, the company’s revenues have been steadily increasing, amounting to approximately $43 billion as of 2020. Undoubtedly, these profits are directly connected to their campaigns and marketing strategies. 

One worth mentioning is their holiday campaign back in 2019. 

The commercial represented a little holiday story, in a backward storytelling style. The script of the commercial takes the father of the family, who bought a holiday present for her daughter back to where he made his joy bringing buying decision. In this scenario, as you see that place was Best Buy’s store. The tagline of the commercial is “Holiday excitement starts here” which is followed by the statement that Best Buy offers the lowest possible price for the products that it sells. 

This strategy is designed to appeal to the mass market. Just like in the case of Walmart, they concentrate on low to mid-income people/families. Best Buy’s marketing team believes that the lowest prices are key factors for adding excitement to the holidays. 

But first of all, the origin of this excitement is the neat place where all the story begins. Best Buy store, located in a beautiful blue building surrounded by snowflakes. Inside the building, there is the smiley girl with a blue Best Buy shirt who effortlessly helps the customer to make the decision that is supposed to bring joy to his daughter’s face. Yet holidays are one of the periods when people usually spend the most money, more specifically most money on presents. 

In May of 2018, Best Buy updated their logo. 

It’s their first update in three decades and the new one significantly differs from the previous logo.

One approach that catches an eye is the maintenance of the yellow tag, despite the big number of changes made. In contrast to the old design, here the company name is outside of the tag and the size of it is noticeably smaller. While you may wonder why it still has a place in the new logo, I want to emphasize that throughout the years, this yellow tag has been Best Buy’s main association in their consumer’s head. So, complete elimination of it may have had a negative impact on the company’s heritage.

As stated on the website about the new logo “It’s an evolution towards the future.” The new logo has a more modern view. First of all, the yellow tag creates more of 20th-century brand associations. Surely, for a company that retails electronics, it may not be beneficial to be associated with the last century, of course, if it’s not selling retro electronics. 

Moreover, the new white font of Best Buy has a more modernized look with its blue background. The background also has some white shades that give elegance to the overall look. Surely, for such a giant company with powerful competitors, it’s essential to keep up with the trends.  

Moving on I would like to speak about one of the most important target markets of Best Buy.

To do so I am going to discuss one of their famous commercials to understand especially what type of audience they tried to attract the most.

The commercial starts with a scene where Best Buy employee welcomes the consumer woman and asks her if she has any questions while in response the woman evilly smiles. Afterward, the woman asks dozens of questions, tries almost every electronics in the store, and even disturbs an employee meeting. However, let’s admit that all the annoying stuff that she does, she does them in a fun way. Her actions are not bothersome and even bring a smile to the employee’s face.

So, what kind of person do we see in this commercial? Here we are dealing with a segment called Sharers?

Who are Sharers?

Lifestyle and Values

Sharers are middle-aged people who try to enjoy every moment of their lives. They think of themselves as adventurous people and are very open to new challenges and changes. This is also expressed in their everyday routine where they try to fill it with enjoyment. At the same time, they are very responsible people, which is expressed both in the workplace and in the family. 

Home is where they enjoy their time the most.

They enjoy cooking for the family members and try to do their best to make sure their family eats healthy. To do so, they are willing to pay more for high quality and environmentally healthy products. Moreover, they are active home entertainment creators and like to invite their friends over for dinners or a cup of tea/coffee. 

Attitude to Shopping:

Sharers are brand oriented people. While some of them may not have high levels of income, they may sacrifice some things to go after their preferred brands. The preference for premium products is not only referred to their personal use, but also for home and family members.

These people are active shoppers and are open to new brands and products. Shopping is one of their ways of fulfillment. Yet, they are not the most loyal consumers, because their decisions of choosing a brand are heavily affected by excitement and curiosity. They are active seekers of special offers and discounts, where they may get a chance to save money on their preferable products. 

Here are some specialties of Sharers.

• They are active soap operas and TV shows, viewers. In addition to that, they frequently follow magazines to get some tips.
• Reading about lifestyle, entertainment and celebrities is another interesting way for them to spend their leisure time. 
• Even though they are adventurous people, they don’t like traveling a lot and rarely go on holiday.

Best Buy also has some interesting stories that you’ve probably never heard of before.

1. The company used to be called Sound of Music. This period was from 1966 to 1983 when they were an audio specialty store. 
2. Best Buy was named Forbes “Company of the Year” in 2004. 
3. Tornado changed Best Buy’s business strategy. In 1983 the famous tornado stuck in 9 of their stores. Afterward, the company was in a period of heavy advertising to compensate for the damages, which’s success led to rebranding. 
4. Best Buy helped customers to recycle more than 1 billion pounds of e-waste. Throughout the years, Best Buy has implemented its recycling programs by keeping a lot of old electronics and appliances out of landfills. 

The huge efforts of these 2 giants are easily noticeably even from first sight. Surely, these 2 companies will continue to please their customers by their promotions, discounts, and high-quality services. This was all about their strategies. For more similar blog posts check out our main page.