Strategic Marketing Management of Wal-Mart Case Study

Strategic Marketing Management of Wal-Mart - Case Study Example As a result, it's British subsidiary ASDA, which already was proficient in the Britain, has made a successful business in U.K. Presently, the ASDA-Wal-Mart supercenters stand at the second level in the supermarket chain of U.K. It covers a huge market share of 17% in the U.K. After the takeover by Wal-Mart in 1999, the retail company has flourished by leaps and bounds. In 2004, ASDA operated a large number of stores in Scotland and employed a number of employees. The total number of store operated by ASDA in 2004 was 259 and the employee strength was 122000 (ASDA/WAL-MART: A Corporate Profile, 2004). The key to ASDA-Wal-Mart's colossal success is its strategic marketing management policies. The company has implemented some highly calculated and effective marketing strategies. It has always made an effort to render the best product to the customers in terms of quality and price. Simultaneously, it has imparted a feeling of associate partners to all its employees. Strategic marketing is a complex management technique for the identification of proper marketing opportunities. It aims to offer better values to the most profitable areas of the business without harming customer interests. The core marketing concepts are concerned with customer needs, customer-client relationship and supply of quality products at affordable prices. This includes a sophisticated market research that rests on customer feedback. A company is directed to build a competitive-edge for long-term activities with the application of various management techniques. The objective of strategic marketing management concerns with a wide array of activities. It involves an aggressive approach to capture the market share rapidly. While performing such kind of marketing management activity, a company needs to focus on the product diversity, the various geographical regions in which it is operating, the role of branding, the marketing channels it is using and the product quality it is offering. All such areas of marketing are required to improve for strategic marketing management. A giant retailer like Wal-Mart will need to re-focus all these issues to find the drawbacks and improve its service by correcting them (Strategic Marketing Management, 2009). The domain of strategic marketing management is vast and it includes internal as well as external analysis of the company. This report focuses only on the external analysis of the company. There are various models that have been put forward to express the external analysis of a company. Porter's five forces model is the most popular among them. The task of strategic analysis involves a high level of expertise and experience. The analysts must possess both the qualities to conduct a strategic analysis with ease. When an analyst uses Porter's five forces model, the planning process consists of a chain of steps. The