Negotiation

Wal-Mart :

Walmart.com is an online shopping resource for millions of Wal-Mart (www.walmart.com) shoppers’ worldwide, serving as an information source, a research database of products or simply a solution to navigating crowded stores. The site boasts resources such as product reviews, ratings and information that help consumers choose the right product, while several additional Wal-Mart Web sites exist outside of Walmart.com to help consumers find ways to stretch their dollar, including Make Your Dollar Stretch and the Checkout Blog, among others. However, the Walmart.com site was looking for the total package. They wanted to create an online shopping site, with all the tools you need to save money and live better – it needed to build a community.

Walmart.com shoppers needed an opportunity to interact more with the site. Product reviews proved to be a respected addition to the site as Web shoppers increasingly relied on the feature when making purchases online. This interaction with the site showed that consumers were willing and ready to communicate regarding the company’s products and services – the only dilemma was the lack of medium in which to share ideas and collaborate. Rather than seeing their consumers navigate away from the site to gain information on these topics, Wal-Mart sought to facilitate conversations within the Walmart.com site, by welcoming user-generated content and leveraging expert views and ideas.

In an effort to further connect with our customers and find new ways in which we can save them money, Wal-Mart recently formed a team dedicated to developing the company’s presence within emerging media. The team wanted Wal-Mart to be an active participant in the money saving conversations that were already happening online, and through their research also sought to understand the way their audiences interacted with various social media tools.

In order to break into the conversation, the Wal-Mart social media team began exploring and...