Retail Article Analyze
Summary
Wal-Mart in conjunction with American Express has decided to launch a prepaid card and a debit account. The main aim of commencing the prepaid card with Express is to carter for the low-income consumers. The debit account will not require much detail in the opening process and will be accessible on various devices such as the automatic teller machines and Smartphone. The bluebird account will mainly focus on mainly the consumers that are turned away from using the banks because of the charges. For this reason, the fees that the card holders are supposed to pay for are minimal and within control (Clifford and Silver-Greenberg, 2012).
The introduction of the debit card for use in the marketplaces simply offers the customer an alternative in carrying cash at hand. The customers that will have the bluebird card will access to various features. One of the benefits of the bluebird card is that the customers will access the mobile banking, road assistance and customer’s services. However, the advocacy groups warn the customers not to register with the card unless they have enough information about the card. In according to the advocacy groups, many customers always apply and obtain prepaid cards without enough information concerning the cards (Clifford and Silver-Greenberg, 2012). For this reason, most customers end up complaining of loss of cash and increased rates of interests by the company providing the cards.
The prepaid card, bluebird introduced by both Wal-Mart and American Express is a strategy to invite even the low earning consumers into purchasing products from Wal-Mart. Since Wal-Mart had introduced a Wal-Mart’s Money Card prepaid card, which had expensive rates compared to the bluebird card. The Wal-Mart’s Money Card charged an overall of three dollar to buy using the card, three dollars to maintain the card monthly and three dollars to reload the card (Clifford and Silver-Greenberg, 2012). However, the bluebird card only two dollars to withdraw in an outside A.T.M withdrawal and a maintenance fee of two dollars.
The Wal-Mart organization has found out various ways to overcome the hypercompetitive nature of the other firms in the retail industry. One of the chief ways of combating the competitiveness of the other firms is rapid growth of the marketing strategies. Wal-Mart has ensured that it increases the customers through various marketing strategies such as introduction of the debit cards. Marketing strategies such as offering the customers discount increases the number of the people willing to purchase products from Wal-Mart.
An additional reason that adds to the successive nature of Wal-Mart is the technology used in most of its shopping centers. The latest technology used by Wal-Mart allows the customers to use electronic cards will conducting their shopping. This is unlike most of the supermarkets that still insists on their customers carrying cash while purchasing commodities. The use of the advanced technology is one of the key strengths of the hyperactive supermarket. This is for the reason that the privileges found in Wal-Mart attracts various loyal customers. The loyal customers will always purchase products from Wal-Mart. However, the weakness of Wal-Mart is the operational management skills that still use the top-down management skills. This affects the relation of the employee and the employer. In return, poor services are offered to the customers.
The continuous usage of the various introduced prepaid cards and accounts such as the bluebird will increase the customer’s services. The usage of the electronic cards will promote the use of electronic money transactions that will reduce instances of money theft especially from people. The electronic money is only accessible to the prepaid cardholder. However, the card users ought to be aware of the increased profitable rates of the organization in subject.
Works cited
Clifford, Stephanie and Silver-Greenberg, Jessica. Wal-Mart and AmEx in Prepaid Card Deal. Published: October 8, 2012
