By Jinjoo Lee
Walmart WMT -0.96%decrease; red down pointing triangle, a 62-year-old retailer, looks sharper than it has in a long time. How long can it keep the spark going?
After years of lagging behind the retail stars Costco Wholesale and Amazon.com, Walmart is catching up quickly. Its shares rose 72% in 2024, and are up another 16% so far this year. Walmart has become an e-commerce heavyweight, and it is gaining share with both low- and high-income shoppers.
For some time, America’s largest retailer—for better or worse—was best known for its corporate motto: Every Day Low Prices. Target and Costco were the places where higher-earning consumers went for exciting products and a fun store experience, while Amazon was light years ahead on e-commerce. Over the past few years, though, Walmart has started encroaching on those competitors’ territory.
To begin with, more of the well-to-do are shopping at Walmart. In February, 89% of households surveyed by Morning Consult earning at least $100,000 said they shopped at the retailer, up from 77% five years earlier. The share of low- and middle-income consumers who shop at Walmart has also grown over the period, according to the survey. Its favorability rating among high-income consumers has improved. About 36% of high-income respondents surveyed by Morning Consult this year said they had a “very favorable” impression of Walmart, up from 27% in 2019.
Meanwhile, Walmart’s e-commerce revenue—including Sam’s Club and its international segment—hit $100 billion in the fiscal year ended in January 2024. Walmart’s total e-commerce business is now about a fifth of the size of Amazon’s, compared with about 10% in 2017. Its paid membership reach is getting harder to ignore. The data firm Numerator estimates that about 12% of U.S. consumers have a Walmart+ membership, compared with Amazon Prime’s 62% share.
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