Walmart to hold thousands of holiday season parties at stores
02 Nov 2017
Walmart plans to hold thousands of holiday season parties at its stores and in a bid to lure customer away from rivals and drive up sales.
The world's biggest retailer looks to repeat, the success it achieved last year when it scored over rivals Target and Kohl's. Walmart said a key piece of its Christmas period strategy would be to hold 20,000 holiday parties at its 4,700 stores as also ramp up sales in-store product demonstrations.
The first such series of parties will focus on toys and take place on 4 November. The retailer will then hold parties that will focus on entertaining on 2 December followed by in-store events on 16 December that will focus on popular gift ideas. In the toy party, for instance kids will play with some toys and take pictures with Santa Claus.
Additionally, Walmart will get more of its dedicated staff, ''Holiday Helpers'', whom brought in last year to help shoppers retrieve online orders or speed up checkout. They will be present in reindeer hats, in addition to the blue and yellow vests Walmart workers wear to make them identifiable. The store workers have been part of Walmart's efforts to raise its customer service scores and generate more store traffic.
Meanwhile, Walmart said it tripled its online selections for the holiday season to 60 million items, and that it would provide free two-day shipping on over two million products when the order size exceeded $35. It added it would also offer discounts for online orders picked up at its stores.
Walmart will also offer more exclusive products from companies including appliance maker Cuisinart and audio equipment maker Bose.
Walmart chief merchandising officer, Steve Bratspies, said the retailer would offer ''thousands of rollbacks'' or reduced prices across products that would include lower prices on 400 toys from brands like Lego and Nerf, Reuters reported.
''We are buying as much inventory as we think we can handle and sell ... we think we are in a really strong position,'' Bratspies said.