Wal-Mart Highlights: Focus on Social Media and Technology This Year
The past year gave us a new glimpse of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), the world’s largest brick and mortar retailer. The company made huge efforts to become technologically advanced and leverage social media in order to reach prospective customers. Wal-Mart invested heavily in technology past year in order to drive its online sales which are still a small proportion of its revenues. Wal-Mart doesn’t disclose its online sales, but according to analysts, Walmart.com generates about $6 billion a year in revenues, less than 2% of its total sales. Traditional retailers like Wal-Mart, Target (NYSE:TGT), Costco (NASDAQ:COST) are facing stiff competition from online retailers like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY).
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Social Media and Technology Related Initiatives
- Wal-Mart formed @Walmart Labs, a unit that creates platforms and products around social and mobile commerce.
- It announced integration with Facebook and acquired Yihaodian, a Chinese e-commerce platform.
- It acquired Grabble and OneRiot, to provide boost to its social and mobile efforts.
- It also acquired Kosmix, a social media company, which enables users to filter and organize content in social networks.
- Vudu, that Wal-Mart purchased for $100 million in 2010, is generating customer interest and has proved to be a success unlike Wal-Mart’s previous online ventures. Wal-Mart has integrated Vudu movies into its Walmart.com website.
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International Frontiers
- In June 2011, it acquired 51% stake in Massmart Holdings for $2.4 billion in order to expand its presence in Africa. Massmart runs nine wholesale and retail chains with approximately 288 stores in 14 African countries.
- We believe Africa could act as a crucial base for Wal-Mart to target other local countries in the region. Countries like Nigeria are gaining greater appeal due to rising affluence levels and increasing size of the middle class across Africa.
- Wal-Mart is also looking at various channels to expand in India in a major way.
We believe last year has been instrumental for Wal-Mart. The company took lots of initiatives to boost its online sales and also made efforts to look for non-traditional ways to connect with its customers. We appreciate Wal-Mart’s efforts and believe they would play a key role in Wal-Mart’s growth in coming years.
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