Importance of Walmart customer loyalty When a consumer buys product for many years from one organisation even than use different organisations product it shows customer loyalty with the organisation.
Customer loyalty to Walmart is vital, because it increase sales growth of Walmart and attract new customers, if customer is satisfied he will remain with Walmart for years and willing to pay high price and sees Walmart as its partner and refer others for Walmart. Walmart use number of approaches for customers to remain loyal. Walmart values their customer they see them as boss. Walmart makes sure that they are able to meet customers expectation and need, Walmart trained their employees to assist any customer entering the store, by welcoming the customer with happy face, guiding them and give them significant information about products which help customer to identify what they need and ends a customer purchasing more, these all policies are made to earn customer loyalty.
Loyal customers are less expected switch to competitors, when customer feels special and important for Walmart this earns customer loyalty. (Wekesa, 2015)In the past Walmart has stayed away from rewards program. Walmart announced on 31 March 2016, Walmart getting into card based, discount centred rewards name as “3-2-1-Save” this strategy offers cash back on every online purchase from Walmart.com. (PYMNTS.com, 2016)Walmart has the largest employer in the United States, to keep customer loyal Walmart focuses on customer retention Walmart makes sure that they are able to meet customer needs and expectations. The founder of Walmart Sam Walton believed that if you work hard and show passion with your work you will get loyalty of customers, Walmart employees are trained to delighted their customer, Walmart also spend time and large amount of money on training and development of their employees according to founder of Walmart Sam Walton belief. It is harder to maintain customer because competition is very high but Walmart got success to keep his customer loyal because of its low prices.
Walmart believed that if customer is satisfied with the product he need, there is more chance that he will come back to the store again, these all strategies which Walmart used is to make customer loyal. (Carson, 2017)According to the ladder of loyalty satisfied customer will turn into supporters of Walmart then it turns to advocates and then it turns to partner. In these steps customer works on the behalf of Walmart as they tell others about Walmart how good Walmart is. Nowadays word of mouth is the best mean of advertising Walmart it can be through person to person or electronic communication. (Mutyala, 2010)Proposal of a loyalty program for Walmart key customersNowadays customer loyalty is important for Walmart because of competition. For keeping existing customers, we need to build loyalty programs.
Trust is key to keeping customer loyalty. To keep customer loyal Walmart can arrange annual party for top 50 loyal customers and getting them a chance to enter a lucky draw if purchases exceeds a certain amount. Walmart can offer a free gift cards or vouchers of certain amount for shopping at Walmart on certain amount purchases, it can offer loyal customers to get 20% cash back on $40 purchase and it can offer earn points rewards such as on every $20 loyal customers will get 4 points if points exceed 100 points, customers will get redeem on purchase, give discount to key customers only.Walmart should keep in touch with key customers because it leads to benefits such as, increases Walmart sales growth, referrals from key customers, attraction of new customers toward Walmart etc. it is beneficial for Walmart if Walmart gives its key customers a loyalty or membership card and a special discount for key customers who all are holding Walmart membership or loyalty cards, Walmart could make easy for them to access their earning points, Walmart can make their website easy to access, it could keep an option on website for loyal customers to log in with their account so they can get information about offers or discount price for loyal customers.
Walmart should keep a database of key customers and update them with their offers.Walmart could keep offers for its key customers, buy 3 products on price of 2 on specific products so that key customer also remains loyal with you and you also get yours maximise profit.
