Impact of social media platforms on sales and engagement, for Walmart and Target

Social Media Marketing, is an adaptation of digital marketing that employs the operation of various social media platforms to publicize information. Businesses engage in these techniques to establish or raise brand awareness, promote particular products, and cultivate customer feedback. As the information age advances, consumers are increasingly connected to numerous online devices and platforms. As a result, business to consumer companies must consider innovative techniques to engage their markets. Through the use of secondary databases, publicly available financial statements, and a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analysis, we can see the trends that have made companies, such as Walmart and Target, so successful and further analyze the techniques to better assist smaller brick and mortar stores. By conducting this research and visualizing the structure in place by the two biggest consumer good companies in the U.S., we can better forecast where this industry is headed in the future and adjust to its outlook as businesses. Thus far, through an examination of e-commerce and its role within the industry, we can see a trend arise in social media platforms. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, ”Retail e-commerce sales for the first quarter of 2019, adjusted for seasonal variation, but not for price changes, was $137.7 billion, an increase of 3.6 percent (±0.7%) from the fourth quarter of 2018”.