Walmart Joins Amazon in Chase for Ad Dollars

Walmart Joins Amazon in Chase for Ad Dollars

Walmart Inc. is one of the worlds largest retailers that sell almost every type of product and they mainly do this through their stores. Although they want to continue this, Walmart also, "wants to become a big seller of advertisements too" (Nassuauer 2019).  The big company has already tried to push their advertisement idea a couple of years ago but they didn't quite succeed, now they know online ads are important because Amazon is very successful in it.

Walmart wants to be able to sell their product by bringing both their digital and ad teams closer together, "Walmart also plans to bring its store and digital ad teams closer together, using Walmart’s vast trove of shopper data to sell marketing opportunities in more parts of its sprawling business, including Vudu, its video streaming service " (Nassuauer 2019).  They want to use their shoppers data to pop ads on shoppers online, this will put their product literally in front of the shoppers eyes. Chief Executive Doug McMillon tells the consumers that the stores are the main engine of profit, Walmart is trying to sell more products online so it can bring in double the profit. 

Amazon also sells ads through other devices, "Last year, Amazon—which sells ads in its dominant e-commerce store, on devices like the Kindle and Fire TV, and across third-party websites—became the third largest seller of digital ads..." (Nassuauer 2019). This is important because Amazon not only sells their ads on the web, but also on other devices like the Kindle and Fire Tv. This marketing tactic puts Amazon yet again ahead of the game.

This article really interested me because I did not know that Walmart was falling behind on their ads to Amazon. It made me realize why and how Amazon have become so successful, and that's through their push with ads. I see ads, commercials, and products of Amazon almost everywhere I go on the web. This is a great marketing plan for Walmart because it will increase their profits and will lead them pass Amazon in ads. 

Nassauer, Sarah. “Walmart Joins Amazon in Chase for Ad Dollars.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 27 Feb. 2019, www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-joins-amazon-in-chase-for-ad-dollars-11551200400?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=17&ns=prod%2Faccounts-wsj.

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-joins-amazon-in-chase-for-ad-dollars-11551200400?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=17

After Coffee, It's Dinner Time at Nestle

After Coffee, It's Dinner Time at Nestle

The article "After Coffee, It's Dinner Time at Nestle" by Carol Ryan talks about how Nestle is thinking about making products for either babies or pets. The Chief Executive of Nestle, Mark Schneider, is currently trying to decide what category has the highest possibility of selling more: pet food, infant meals, or bottled water. 

Nestle has existing water brands such as San Pellegrino and Perrier, which make low operating margins for the company. Therefore, a water deal is very unlikely because the company is trying to improve its margins not make the lower. 

Baby food is attractive and sales for baby formula should grow  by 6% between now and 2023. A potential candidate for baby food that Nestle is looking at is Abbott Laboratories. Abbott Laboratories' brand Similac, can make Nestle the U.S. leader in baby food. The only problem with this is that baby food brands aren't on the market. 

Pet food sales are also growing at 6%. Nestle has existing pet food brands such as Friskies and Dog Chow and they both make an operating margin above the company's set goal. Nestle is looking to buy Champion because people in well developed countries are spending more to spoil their pets and Champion offers premium products. 

Baby food and pet food are both appealing to Nestle and it all depends on what product makes more sales. 

I found this article interesting because Nestle is looking for ways to expand its product variety, which depends on whether there's a lot of babies who need baby food or pets being spoiled. This article is related to class because it has to do with new product development and the four Ps. 

Karla Gorostieta 

Works Cited:

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-coffee-its-dinner-time-at-nestle-11547035654

Published by Carol Ryan on January 9, 2019 7:07 a.m.ET

Green Power: The Quest to Harness Energy From Leaves

"Green Power: The Quest to Harness Energy From Leaves" 

The article "Green Power: The Quest to Harness Energy From Leaves" by Rebecca Heilweil addresses the concern of natural energy.




This article starts by giving the readers a brief history of why plants came into consideration for natural energy. There was a need and scientist found the usefulness of leaves. In the search, "researchers at the Center for Micro-BioRobotics at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, in Italy" performed an experiment with leaves of plants and found that they are able to convert wind energy into 150 volts of electricity. That is enough to light up 100 small LEDs.

Even though this experiment was performed inside a lab, the Center's goal is to have plants produce energy for everything outside of their labs. This required time and new ideas and in October, Mazzolai and her team published a paper describing the success they had on their experiment using leaves. In this experiment it was "said they tested about 10 plant species. Some were more effective than others at generating power, but theoretically, the method could be applied to almost any land plant."

Then "researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Lanzhou Institute of Chemical Physics published a paper describing how they had powered LEDs and a watch with a similar wind-driven method, using natural and artificial leaves."

Now scientists search for the correct technology that can apply leave-power to any tools. Even though "the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Stanford University published research in July 2017 describing a tubular, vine-like robot that moves by extending itself at the tip, allowing it to 'grow' through small crevices," the search for the appropriate technology is still on.



I found this article interesting because it was concerning a new type of energy that will eventually be in everyone's tools. Also, there will be a need to properly introduce this new energy to the public and that is where marketing comes into play. Lastly, I believe with the right technology, "leave-power" will be able to compete with the current energy providers.

Submitted by: Gorman Aguilar
Title of Article: Green Power: The Quest to Harness Energy From Leaves
Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/green-power-the-quest-to-harness-energy-from-leaves-11551366000?mod=foesummaries  
Publish Time: Feb. 28, 2019

Puma First Flagship Store in U.S

German sportswear maker Puma has signed a long-term contract to open a first flagship store in U.S on Fifth Avenue. 

609 Fifth Avenue

   Puma has been joining to the sportswear making industry in U.S for a while ago and competing with other rivals such as Nike, Adidas and Under Amour. In my opinion, Puma has not been attractive to the U.S buyers as much as others have done. For example, each company usually has slogans to go with its brand: "Just do it" (Nike), "Adidas is all in" (Adidas)

Nike says: YOLO!!! 😎

Adidas answers: Count me in!! 🙋🙋

How about Puma?

My name is Puma and I am a panther!

The answer is NO! It is the only brand that does not have the slogan, which could be an unique trait of the company. In the other hands, usually within thirty seconds of a commercial, most companies would try anything to create a commercial video, which has a short (of course!), effective and easy to remember slogan, that can withdraw audiences' attentions or even become a trend. This is a challenge to Puma in order to become more popular in the industry.

   Choosing the Fifth Avenue to open a flagship store is a smart move of the strategy team. Fifth Avenue crosses from north to south of Manhattan. It is known as the fanciest shopping street in the city with many high-end fashion brands. As Russ Kahn, the senior vice president of retail for Puma said in the article, this store will have variety products that there has none of the stores in U.S has had it before. This location will help the retail revenue of the company grow better.

   However, online retail brings lots of convenience to the customers, such as minimizing the travelling, saving time, free shipping, etc. It is the reason of the reducing the average rent in 2018. Puma needs to work harder in 2019 to satisfy customers' needs and not losing in the competition between the sportswear-maker companies.

Written by: Thu Nguyen

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sportswear-maker-puma-to-open-new-york-flagship-on-fifth-avenue-1526594915

Meal Subscription Service Freshly Hires Its New CMO From Spotify

Freshly 

Mayur Gupta - Former VP of Growth and Marketing at Spotify 

Meal Subscription Service Freshly Hires Its New CMO From Spotify

In order to move towards hopefully differentiating their service in a saturated market by choosing to add a member to their team with unique and valuable experience, Freshly (a 100% fresh - not frozen - and diverse diet friendly prepared meal delivery service - as opposed to meal kit service)  has recently hired a new Chief Marketing Officer - a prior Spotify executive. I am constantly looking for a more efficient and cost effective way to prepare and purchase groceries - and am an avid fan of Spotify, so this article caught my immediate attention. I have personally purchased Spotify products and observed their marketing plan, (it is multi faceted and cultivates existing customers with personalized incentives and discounts for keeping their service - even on the verge of discontinuing) and believe new Freshly CMO Mayur Gupta could truly provide Freshly with some unique strategies aimed at gaining a highly sought after millennial target market and other lost meal-kit customers - as Spotify's methods often appear to do very well in their defined target markets with acute personalization and proximity to interest.  Startups like Freshly have seen much varied experience in this highly complicated and competitive saturated market of grocery and food delivery - and one currently being actively eyed even by big movers such as Amazon, who desires to expand their fresh product delivery services within the coming years. Gupta stated, regarding the move, "There’s a massive evolution happening from the meal-kit space that everybody thought could disrupt the category and really drive convenience,”... “As things go along, there’s the realization that it isn’t really that convenient."  Also, Gupta looks to enter the consumer packaged foods (CPF) market unique to many of Freshly's competition - currently shared with large established firms such as Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, and Tyson Foods. This employment by Freshly represents the desire to capture valuable experience gained from working in a subscription service environment. As Freshly is also a subscription based service, Gupta will likely have plenty of valuable input to provide on several aspects of the marketing plan which are specific to these types of services.


Works Cited:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/meal-subscription-service-freshly-hires-its-new-cmo-from-spotify-11546513200

freshly-food-delivery-review-722x406.jpg

After Coffee, It’s Dinner Time at Nestlé

Name: Yeye Talabi

Title: After Coffee, It’s Dinner Time at Nestlé

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-coffee-its-dinner-time-at-nestle-11547035654

Time published: Jan. 9, 2019 7:07 a.m. ET

Image: 

Analysis: Nestlé is famously known for its coffee but it wants to recover from last year by focusing on higher returns by producing more essential household products. I chose this article because I thought it was interesting to read how a company mostly known for its coffee wants to offer less processed items to their consumers. This article relates to our class because it discusses some aspects of the marketing research process discussed in chapter 8. The company defines the problem which is how can Nestle expand its existing products for long- term profit. The situation is analyzed by using the already given information which is consumers who place health as a primary factor while shopping is uninterested in Nestle’s unhealthy products. Also, since coffee sales declined last year compared to the other products that Nestle sells, what area should it spend more time and money in producing more products? One of the areas proposed is selling more water. But, investor Daniel Loeb does not think that is a wise decision because of high shipping costs for companies such as San Pellegrino and Perrier. The second option is focusing on baby food. Although Nestle already has baby formula products, the U.S. and China are dominating in terms of competition. It seems based on last year’s sales, Nestle would be more successful in pet food. It sold $91 billion worth of pet food while baby food only yielded $54 billion in sales. Nestle has observed that consumers are ensuring that their pets are pampered more by eating more specialized food. Even though selling more pet food seems to be the more obvious product liked by many, it is not Nestle’s solution. I say this because even though Nestle has defined their problem and analyzed the situation, it is yet to fully interpret the data which is the last step of the market research process. It is said that pet food did better than infant items through quantitative research but no other data was given. What measures can be used to validate the data? Nestle realized just like me that since an answer to the last step is not given, no exact solution can be made.

Works cited: 

Image: https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-coffee-its-dinner-time-at-nestle-11547035654

 

Walmart Joins Amazon in Chase for Ad Dollars

The article I have chosen talks about Walmart’s newest plan to boost its digital marketing.  Walmart, the “world’s largest retailer” (Nausser, 2019) has always had ads in its stores.  Companies such as Unilever and Kellog have ads in Walmart’s nationwide.  Walmart also had previously looked to an outside firm (Triad) to sell as space on its website.  Now, Walmart wants to do, “[bring] its digital ad business in-house” (Nausser, 2019) according to executives.  In addition, Walmart will use data from its shoppers to sell marketing opportunities.  The company had tried years ago to push online marketing, but was not a success.  However, Doug McMillon (Walmart’s chief executive) is determined to create an ad business that will rival that of Amazon.  According to Walmart’s chief merchandising officer Steve Bratspies, “[...] advertising can be more efficient than with competitors because marketers benefit from Walmart’s online and store purchasing data [...]” (Nausser, 2019).  If a customer bought a certain item like a bicycle at Walmart, the shopper could see an add for a helmet on social media.  The link from the ad would direct the customer back to Walmart.com. This can help the company achieve more revenue from online shopping (most of Walmart’s purchases are in-store).  Also, building an ad network will help Walmart compete with Amazon in trade marketing.  Trade marketing involves strategically putting products in the best locations to be noticed in stores.  Many packed-good manufacturers use Amazon for trade marketing (since Amazon sells ads).  The ultimate goals for Walmart’s Ad network is to attract more revenue online, allow suppliers and digital teams to work together, and to compete with Amazon.

This topic caught my interest mainly because I was shocked.  I was under the impression that a major corporation like Walmart would not have problems advertising online.  I have even seen Walmart ads online.  But nevertheless, the article shows us how important is for every company to modify their marketing strategy. Even we’ll-known ones like Walmart.  Otherwise, any opportunity to gain potential extra revenue is lost.  Using shopper data clearly follows one of the 4 C’s; Customer.  We have seen the usage of data for advertising purposes many times on social media.  Sites like Instagram and Facebook formulate their algorithms for each individual user based on browsing (even shopping) history.  This strategy can be beneficial for Walmart’s customers by decreasing the time needed to shop online.  In addition, it allows Walmart to potentially gain repeated customers.  Also, having suppliers and digital teams work together can help the company advertise better both in-store and online.  

Works/Picture Cited: Nausser, Susan.  “Walmart Joins Amazon in Chase for Ad Dollars”.  Media and Marketing, The Wall Street Journal, Web, 26 February 2019. 1 March, 2019. https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-joins-amazon-in-chase-for-ad-dollars-11551200400?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=12