Online shopping has increased dramatically over the last few years, and online retailing is becoming the top priority of all major grocery retailers. On one hand, retailers see the need to offer easy and convenient shopping venues to attract and keep customers. On the other hand, the consumers take advantage of the extended product assortments and services offered by both online and traditional retailers. More and more traditional brick and mortar retailers such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Costco, and Macy’s are becoming brick and click stores. Multichannel retailing has become a popular way to sell products and services. The marketing managers need to find ways to effectively and efficiently manage multichannels and deliver appropriate marketing mix to online and offline channels. In this case, we focus on Wal-Mart’s brick and click channel management issues.
Case Reading
Review the following articles related to brick and click shopping and multichannel retailing (Use the Trident Online Library search engine on TLC homepage to find the articles):
Abrams, R. (2016). Walmart outperforms estimates, but online retail lags. New York Times (Online).
Avery, J., Steenburgh, T.J., Deighton, J., & Caravella, M. (2013). Adding bricks to clicks: On the role of physical stores in a world of online shopping. GfK Marketing Intelligence Review, 5(2), 29.
Clicks and bricks; retailers and the internet. (2012). The Economist, 402 (8773), 18.
Griffiths, G H & Howard, A (2008). Balancing clicks and bricks – strategies for multichannel retailers. Journal of Global Business Issues, 2(1), 69.
Katia Campo, & Els Breugelmans. (2015). Buying groceries in brick and click stores: Category allocation decisions and the moderating effect of online buying experience. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 31, 63.
Mixing bricks with clicks; retail. (2013). The Economist,406(8828), 70.
Saba, J. (2016). Walmart’s bid for jet.com could help it compete against amazon. New York Times (Online).
Tabuchi, H. (2015). Walmart, lagging in online sales, is strengthening E-commerce. New York Times (Online).
Wahba, P. (2017). Walmart’s 29% Online Holiday Season Growth Sends Shares Jumping. Fortune. Retrieved from
Case Assignment
Develop a report in terms of the following guidelines based on the articles listed above and other supplemental articles. A well-written report should have a brief introduction, headings or subheadings, and a brief concluding comment. Note that you should use some keywords as headings or subheadings such as "Facts Recap," instead of a sentence or a question.
- Briefly review the facts on the brick and click retailing and multichannel shopping, as reported in the articles.
- Describe how Wal-Mart performed in the online channel. How could Wal-Mart do a better job to manage the online and offline channels? Consider appropriate distribution concepts to support your arguments.
- Considering the changing consumer shopping behaviors, how would you recommend Wal-Mart compete with Amazon and other retailers in the future?