Current Operations of Wal-Mart Stores Inc

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is a multinational corporation that is heavily involved in supermarket sales, wholesale, and other units in different formats all over the world (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 2017, n.p). The corporation is well-known for being the world's leading brick-and-mortar store. Furthermore, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. operates several supermarket outlets around the world, including Sam's Club Membership Warehouse Stores, ASDA in the United Kingdom, Bodega in Mexico, and Seiyu stores in Japan.
According to Bhatnagar and Syam (2014, p. 1295), hybrid retailing is critical for global retail stores. In this essence, the ready acceptability of the online channels of promotion in comparison with the traditional means creates the necessity to adopt the internet use while advertising the business brands of bricks and mortar. Furtherly, they proceeded to mention that the bricks and mortar dealers would create an online store for the items-traditional bricks (Bhatnagar and Syam 2014, p. 1296). Similarly, the current extensive use of internet and social media has appeared vital for several businesses (Ashraf, Thongpapanl, and Razzaque 2016, p. 69). Therefore, the e-commerce, when adequately used, would directly create awareness about the retail brands in stores, thus reaching a broad range of customers.
On the other hand, online marketing of retailers for bricks and mortar requires high retail assortment (Bhatnagar and Syam 2014, p. 1297). Purportedly, the aspects such as inventory shipping, merchandise cost presentation are typical with the increasing number of items to be carried by the retailers. To complement internet marketing of bricks and mortar, improving customers’ welfare is very paramount, meaning the dealers must offer considerable discounts and transport costs after selling the items (Bhatnagar and Syam 2014, p. 1300). Of course, since several businesses are joining online promotion, the nature of after-sales services given by different companies to their clients matters a lot and would create the exclusiveness.
Article 2
The second article by Badrinarayanan, Becerra, and Madhavaram (2014, p. 1015) puts it clear that online stores should critically evaluate the trust, attitude, and purchasing intentions of the clients before presenting their brands on the internet. On the other hand, the store owners should struggle to win the clients’ perceived congruity between multichannel retailers and online stores (Badrinarayanan, Becerra, and Madhavaram 2014, p. 1017). In this regard, retail companies should monitor and maintain that there is an actual fit between images of brands in the stores and warehouse with the ones in the online stores' platform. Apparently, Verma, Sharma, Sheth (2016, p. 206) maintains that businesses are supposed to keep the utmost good faith in their operations by ensuring that credibility, integrity, and trustworthiness remain the philosophy of activities to retain a broad range of clients.
How Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Can be Effective by Using Internet Technologies
With the adoption of online promotion like the use of social media, the Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. would extend the coverage to reach a vast potential market that is majorly users of the internet. By displaying the brands of the items on such sites, customers would come from the entire parts of the world to visit their physical stores to obtain the commodities.
On the other hand, efficient use of internet technologies would increase the competitiveness of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. By displaying the right images of items that are highly appealing and present in the store, the level of trust and high retention of the clients would be enhanced. Moreover, online marketing through the introduction of various Apps on the smartphones would tentatively increase the effectiveness and convenience of accessing the products of the retail company due to massive awareness.
Assessment
So far, the first article talked about hybrid stores for bricks and mortar with traditional stores being complemented with the online warehouses and retail assortment (Bhatnagar and Syam 2014, p. 1297). In my opinion, retail companies should proceed to carry more research and innovation to introduce new brands that would be more appealing to the clients when displayed on the media as opposed to limiting themselves to old brands. With the current competition in global commerce, Verma, Sharma, Sheth (2016, p. 217) proposes that redesigning and branding of products and services in addition to online marketing would appeal more to the customers.







References
Ashraf, A., Thongpapanl, N. and Razzaque, M., 2016. The Influence of Online Customers’ Regulatory Fit on Their Attitude and Purchase Intention. Celebrating America’s Pastimes: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Marketing? (pp. 69-70). Springer International Publishing.
Badrinarayanan, V., Becerra, E.P. and Madhavaram, S., 2014. Influence of congruity in store-attribute dimensions and self-image on purchase intentions in online stores of multichannel retailers. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 21(6), pp.1013-1020.
Bhatnagar, A. and Syam, S.S., 2014. Allocating a hybrid retailer's assortment across retail stores: Bricks-and-mortar vs online. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1293-1302.
Verma, V., Sharma, D. and Sheth, J., 2016. Does relationship marketing matter in online retailing? A meta-analytic approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(2), pp.206-217.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. 2017. Our business. [Online] (updated 2017) Available at: [Accessed September 28th, 2017]