Walmart Credits Marketing For Recent Gains

  • March 30, 2012

In a presentation for investors, Walmart says its recent sales gains are due to stepped-up marketing efforts, and that in the year ahead, it will cut grocery prices by as much as $1 billion. “We had a great marketing program,” Duncan MacNaughton, Walmart’s EVP/CMO says in a presentation to CIBC Retail and Consumer Conference, describing the holiday period. “We basically doubled down our marketing support. We've spent twice what we had the prior quarter to drive traffic into our stores. We did it with print, we did it with media, multimedia, we did it with digital, we did it with social, and we brought customers to the store. And we were quite excited with the way the customer engaged with us.”

He also says the Bentonville, Ark.-based chain then went on to have its strongest results in January, “and that is what really gives us hope, because it tells us that assortment is working, price is working, in-stock is working, and the innovation that we brought back to our store customer working.”

In addition to the $1 billion in price reductions, funded by productivity improvements, he says the store has re-engaged with Nielsen, “and we now have local data on pricing, item by item, market by market. We are ensuring that we will have price leadership and price separation across our categories and across the U.S. This is a big investment for us.”

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