Walmart and Sam’s Club refine customer-centric research

Geoffrey Precourt

Walmart, and its Sam's Club wholesale arm, are two of America's largest retailers. Tapping consumer insights in an enterprise of that scale presents a significant challenge, which the two organisations have sought to achieve through ensuring buy-in at senior level, creating insights that empower their target audience, and emphasising practicality to ensure the findings of research can be applied and make a measurable difference.

Walmart and Sam's Club refine customer-centric research

Geoffrey PrecourtWarc

Even Walmart doesn't get it right all the time. But the retailer never stops working at perfection. In a panel discussing "How to embed consumer insights throughout the organization" at the Advertising Research Foundation's 2013 Re:think conference, Ramón Portilla, senior director/insights operations and membership for Sam's Club – Walmart's wholesale unit – revealed: "We've been trying to get more and more strategic."

Ramón Portilla discusses customer-centric researchPhoto credit: Dan Collazo

For Sam's Club, and its parent, that meant the research function "was commissioned to really excel at synthesizing, integrating...

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