How Walmart adapted its IoT strategy to the pandemic | VentureBeat

Analysis

How Walmart adapted its IoT strategy to the

pandemic
Manasa Gogineni@manasaveenago
April 22, 2021 11:50 AM

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The inside of a Walmart distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Image Credit: Spencer Tirey / Walmart

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Walmart made $559 billion in total revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first fiscal
year, up from $514.4 billion in fiscal 2019, thanks in part to newly integrated internet of
things (IoT) capabilities to improve food quality and lower energy consumption.
Walmart claims its systems for IoT deployments are built at a scale unmatched across
the retail industry: The company reports that, every day, it takes in approximately 1.5
billion messages and analyzes over one terabyte of data. This proprietary software
includes a cloud-based dashboard application to manage volume and detect anomalous
events, such as refrigeration failures, so they can ostensibly be fixed more quickly,
saving ice cream from melting while driving corporate profit.

VP of technology Sanjay Radhakrishnan oversees Walmart’s IoT platforms and

applications. Radhakrishnan sat down with VentureBeat to describe the giant retail
chain’s long-term data strategy and how it’s changed since last March to accommodate
changing store ecosystems across the U.S.

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This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

VentureBeat: How would you describe Walmart’s approach to IoT at a high

level?

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Sanjay Radhakrishnan: When we started on this journey, we had three key

objectives. One was to address this at the scale of Walmart’s, that Walmart can actually
leverage the impact of IoT at Walmart scale. The second objective was to ensure that we
are the control plane for our data. So, we control where our data lands, and we have the
ability to convert into business insights. And then the last objective was really
maintaining that connection to our end customer experience. And then ensuring that we
are being good corporate citizens, with respect to our sustainability initiatives. So just
want to set the stage that when we started on this IoT journey, those were the three
main drivers that we were looking to solve.

VentureBeat: I’m really interested in that IoT journey. Could you tell me
more about how Walmart has evolved its tech platforms over the past
couple of years? And what has that progression has looked like, maybe in
the past 5, 10, even 15 years?
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Radhakrishnan: You know, with those three objectives in the background, we have
always had all kinds of devices in our stores. And these devices typically come from
vendors or original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) that actually manufactured these
devices. Typically this equipment comes with some kind of an HMI human machine
interface that’s on the machine, so you can actually go connect to it and collect data out
of these devices in a one-off fashion.

And we’ve always done that. But with this IoT journey, what we really wanted to do was
we wanted to move into the driver’s seat, where we can actually normalize these datasets
coming from all these different machines, different devices, and different OEMs. We
normalize that data, and we control our data using IoT from these devices and provide
those data sets to our business in a way where we can actually convert them into useful
information and useful insights and really improve that end customer experience. So
our journey really has been, instead of individual point-to-point access from these
individual machines, on how we can grow this at scale by being the control plane and
getting all this data from equipment, normalize it, and simplify it into our language so
that we can do intelligent things things with it, right? And so that focus is really shifted
inside Walmart by building our own software that we are using to form that control.

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VentureBeat: That’s fascinating. And, in building this proprietary software

at such a great scale, did Walmart run into any particular kinds of
challenges or problems that it then worked to overcome?

Radhakrishnan: The biggest challenge we have is just the variety of devices that we
have in our ecosystem. They come from different OEMs, they are across different
generations of these devices, and they all speak different languages. And what this
means to us is, in our world, we are dealing with a wide mix of sensors, a range of
protocols, and really a myriad of information models. So our approach has been to look
at how we build our software and where we are talking to all these devices. You know,
talking to the different protocols. But we have an ability to kind of normalize all of that
data into one consistent IoT specification. That’s a Walmart IoT specification. And then
we apply the right kind of data quality checks, so that we can certify the data and drop it
into our control plane. And then we take it from there.

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So once we are able to connect the devices to our control plane, then we can land the
data, either at the edge or the cloud. And afterward our software engineers can build all
kinds of applications for our business customers. And we really kind of looked at this in
a cloud-agnostic fashion. So we ensure that we have a dual-pronged strategy with our
infrastructure. We leverage infrastructure in our own datacenters, and we also leverage
infrastructure at top cloud providers. The focus really has been to ensure that our IoT
pipeline software can access the right infrastructure at scale, considering things like
latency and connectivity concerns.
VentureBeat: Within this group of devices you mentioned, are you
including in-store ones like refrigeration systems from the ice cream case
study?

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Radhakrishnan: Yeah, that’s right. So you walk into the store and you see a lot of
refrigeration cases. We are talking about sensors that are actually inside these
refrigeration cases. And they are connected to what we call controllers in the store. We
are actually connecting into those controllers and pulling device telemetry signals. It’s a
lot of operating functions that you’re getting out of the equipment, and we are getting it
in a consistent manner, in a continuous stream, to do intelligent things.

VentureBeat: For the refrigeration IoT tech, could I hear more about how
that’s architected in the cloud? Are there any specific foods, like ice cream
or frozen pizzas for example, that are easier or more difficult to maintain
with the technology?

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Radhakrishnan: We stream from edge to the cloud, and we have different pathways
in the cloud based on data usage patterns. Our IoT applications can access data across
the edge and cloud to solve business problems. We are cloud agnostic and leverage a
dual-prong strategy that includes access to infrastructure in our own datacenters and
top cloud providers. And our focus has been to ensure that our IoT pipeline software can
access the right infrastructure at scale, considering connectivity and latency constraints.
The type of food in the refrigeration cases does not cause differing complexity of our
system.

VentureBeat: Do you have any statistics on whether Walmart food quality

has been more consistent since IoT tech was implemented? I’m curious if
there are any specific stores or products that have seen a particularly
measurable difference.

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Radhakrishnan: What I’ll say is, our focus has been on how you drive operational
efficiencies in the store. For example, when things go wrong in the store, technicians
actually fix problems with this equipment that is in the store. So the focus has been on
how you get the right technician to the right place at the right time so that we can
proactively address issues. Because if you don’t, it could impact product quality. Since
we have started this journey, just by looking at reference duration, we have been able to
improve our refrigeration equipment health by an average of 30%.

VentureBeat: On a related note, I remember reading about Walmart’s

intention to limit energy consumption. Could you tell me more about how
that energy approach is architected in the cloud? Are there any specific
frameworks or data strategies that Walmart is using to accomplish that?
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Radhakrishnan: If you look at our architecture and our frameworks, I would say it’s
everything from connecting to the devices to using sophisticated infrastructure and
software that runs on the edge and actually knows how to connect to these devices while
holding telemetry data. Now, it depends on our use cases. If they’re kind of low latency
use cases, then we store data at the edge, and we have logic at the edge to fulfill those
use cases.

Otherwise, we are streaming data to the cloud. And in the cloud, we have multiple kind
of patterns depending on data usage. We might extend the data into kind of a cold path,
or a warm path, and our IoT applications have the ability to access the data, either at the
edge or in the cloud. They can basically build business applications and solve business
problems. So, if you’re talking about frameworks and the technology stack, it’s a mix.

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We use Walmart homegrown and open standard frameworks like Spring and .NET Core,
our device protocols. We can connect to devices all the way from BACnet to Modbus to
serial communications to some of the more recent protocols like HTTP and Message
Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). If you look at the tech stack itself, typically our
device drivers are written in Java, and the applications themselves are all ReactJS, not
GS applications that use Linux-type operating systems.

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VentureBeat: I’m interested in hearing more about how individual elements

of Walmart’s tech stack — choices like Spring tools, for example —
specifically help with IoT deployments. How and why do specific tools work
well for Walmart’s use cases, like scaling large volumes of data?

Radhakrishnan: Messages are generated by the equipment (such as HVAC and

refrigeration controllers) in the stores and processed by software on edge infrastructure.
From the IoT edge infrastructure, messages are then sent to our cloud storage to be
processed and consumed by software applications. We use a hybrid approach of edge
and cloud computing depending on the type of data. The data is sent over our secured
network to our proprietary solution that has multiple architectural components and
micro services. We use a mix of Walmart internally developed and open standard
frameworks like Spring Boot and .NET Core. Our strategy is to build our software to be
cloud agnostic, so we use common frameworks and languages such as Java, Embedded
C, React, NodeJS, and Linux technologies.

Our focus is really trying to make sure that we map the right technology to solve the
right business problem. We always start with the customer in mind. What is the use
case? What’s the business? How do our internal customers solve thinking of the end
customer in mind, and then work our way back to what does that mean for tech and
then what’s the right tech stack to actually fulfill that. So, I mean we are pretty open, and
the focus really is on understanding the customer problem, and then marrying it to the
right tech stack to solve that problem.

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VentureBeat: Could you tell me a little bit more about Walmart’s IoT
developments in the last year, and how they’ve helped the chain adjust to
the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenges?

Radhakrishnan: The pandemic has definitely opened new proper business problems
and use cases for us where IoT is extremely useful to leverage. For example, when the
pandemic hit, we reduced hours in our stores, so our associates could restock inventory
and sanitize stores for our customers. We have this system called Demand Response,
which is one of the IoT applications that we have built in-house. And we were able to
leverage that to a working model, where we can control the temperature settings in the
stores to adjust to these new hours, and that brought a lot of productivity to our
associates. Instead of using more constrained and manual approaches, now they have an
actual system, where they can do remote deployment of capabilities and really control
our high-performance computing (HPC) systems in a remote manner at scale. From a
productivity angle, it helped the business, and also from a sustainability angle, we were
able to reduce the energy consumption on the grid. So to give you an example, our
system was able to execute shedding events. We did it for about 200 sites, and we were
able to save enough electricity to roughly power 20-plus U.S. households for a year. That
gives you a scale for how we are giving back, both in terms of productivity for our
associates and also in terms of sustainability.

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VentureBeat: How has Walmart’s existing IoT and tech infrastructure

allowed for its engineers to create new capabilities, like the COVID-19
responses, so quickly?

Radhakrishnan: Over the last few years, we have moved to the driver’s seat, where we
built software that will normalize and control our data using IoT from these devices,
converting the data to insights that the business can use in decision-making. We apply
the right data quality checks to certify the data and bring the data into our control plane.
We were able to incorporate real-time data streaming and improve the speed at which
issues are identified and resolved in a highly accurate manner. Having this foundation
in place has allowed us to quickly respond to external factors, like adjusting store hours
overnight during the early response to COVID-19. Another recent example of the IoT
technology allowing us to respond quickly would be in February, when the extreme cold
weather impacted energy grids in numerous communities. We had the necessary
controls in place for demand shedding already, so we were able to apply the tool in a
new way that controlled HVAC heating set points and reduced our energy consumption.
In less than two days, we used the technology to successfully reduce the HVAC energy
consumption in almost 500 stores.
VentureBeat: Are there any other digital platform technologies related to
ML, blockchain, IoT, or ERP Walmart is deploying? And are there any in
particular that Walmart wants to research next?

Radhakrishnan: For our IoT use cases, we are looking at ways we can further improve
the customer experience and our impact on the communities we serve. Through
algorithms, we will continue to update our algorithms as we identify trends between
what the data is telling us and how we should respond. Through equipment, we will
identify other equipment that we can connect to that would provide a benefit to our
customer for remote diagnostics and proactive maintenance.

VentureBeat's

How Walmart Is Responding To Covid-Related Challenges (forbes.com)

ow Walmart Is Responding To Covid-

Related Challenges
Edward Segal
Senior Contributor
I cover crisis-related news, issues and topics.
Follow
Sep 1, 2021,07:01am EDT

Listen to article3 minutes


PARK CITY - JANUARY 22: A general View of Wal Mart during the 2004
Sundance Film Festival January ... [+]
GETTY IMAGES

The Covid-19 pandemic has tested Walmart—and the rest corporate America—
in unprecedented ways. And just when it seemed the crisis would subside, the
light at the end of the tunnel turned out to be another oncoming train in the
form of the Delta variant. At the same time, business leaders have had to
motivate talent and pursue profits amid a sensitive political landscape that
spurred new levels of corporate activism.

Walmart Bucks The Trend

Despite being among the hardest hit by the pandemic, employers in

healthcare, education and retail dominated the rankings in Forbes’ recently
released America’s Best Employers By State 2021 list, accounting for 41% of
the listings, up from 38% last year. In retail, for example, sales plunged a
record 16.4% in April 2020, while 2.1 million employees lost their jobs.

Walmart, which was named a top employer in 27 states, bucked this

trend: Ecommerce sales grew 74% during this time, propelled by consumer
demand for grocery pickup and delivery and spurring the hiring of more than
235,000 store associates.
PROMOTED

Not Immune From Challenges

Despite its popularity among surveyed workers, the country’s largest private
employer has not been immune to the talent challenges that have plagued its
peers.

Just last month, the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer announced it would

cover the cost of college tuition and books for its 1.5 million part- and full-time
associates in an effort to attract and retain talent. Walmart also announced
that it would buck the trend of recent years and close on Thanksgiving Day, as
a thank you for employees’ hard work amid the pandemic.

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Keeping Workers Safe

The biggest challenge, of course, is keeping workers safe. After complaints

about unsafe working conditions in the early days of the pandemic, the
company has taken a variety of steps toward ensuring employees’ safety,
including installing protective plexiglass barriers at registers and limiting the
number of shoppers allowed in stores at any given time.

In July, Walmart also issued a mask mandate for all store employees in high-
risk counties, and a vaccine requirement for all corporate staff and
management-level employees.

Those workers who aren’t required to get their shots have been incentivized to
do so through cash bonuses and paid time off, including up to three days’
worth of leave in case they have adverse reactions to the vaccine.

Now that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine has full FDA approval, of course, that
policy may change.

Shifting Working Conditions

The pandemic has been a transformative period that’s likely to shift working
conditions for years to come. On the positive side, wages in 2021 have grown
at the fastest rate in 35 years. Average pay for an associate at Walmart rose to
between $13 and $19 an hour, depending on store location.
Advice For Business Leaders

Taking a cue from Walmart’s success in meeting the challenges created by the
Covid pandemic:

 Don’t assume your organization is immune to a crisis. It’s not a

matter of if, but when, a crisis will hit.

 Pay attention to complaints, comments or concerns about how

you are addressing a crisis, and respond accordingly and
appropriately.

 Consider worst-case scenarios that might become realities for

your company, and take steps to prevent or mitigate them as soon
as possible.

 Show your thanks and appreciation for those who helped or are
helping you to address the crisis.

How the pandemic helped Walmart battle Amazon Marketplace for sellers | Reuters
How the pandemic helped Walmart
battle Amazon Marketplace for
sellers
By Richa Naidu
[1/2] A Walmart sign is seen inside its department store in West Haven, Connecticut,
U.S., February 17, 2021. REUTERS/Mike Segar
12

CHICAGO, April 14 (Reuters) - Between 2009 and 2014,

Walmart’s (WMT.N) Marketplace business, where outside merchants
hawk everything from baby blankets to power tools, counted no more
than six sellers, and was described by one expert as “in limbo.”
People shop at a Walmart Supercentre amid coronavirus fears spreading in Toronto,
Ontario, Canada March 13, 2020. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
But what was treated as an afterthought for years has emerged as an
important leg in the world’s biggest retailer’s long-term strategy to take
on Amazon Inc (AMZN.O), which it is battling for advertising and
ecommerce dollars.
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Walmart Marketplace grew to an estimated 70,000 sellers in 2020,

fueled by a surge in online shopping due to the Covid-19 pandemic
and a series of investments in technology and vendor relationships
reported here for the first time.
That is expected to rise 146% by the end of 2022, according to
projections by data firm Marketplace Pulse that have not yet been
published.

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The rapid growth is starting to stress the system, some merchants

said, a growing number of whom worry that if the pace picks up,
Walmart risks damaging its reputation as a haven for quality sellers.
Reuters spoke with vendors from Walmart.com and Amazon, analytics
companies that help merchants sell on both marketplaces, industry
experts, consultants and executives.

"A year or two ago, every brand on Walmart.com would be trustworthy

but now it's getting very similar to Amazon and that's a huge risk," said
Cal Chan, who sells supplements and skincare products on both
Walmart and Amazon. "Amazon let everyone under the sun in - that
helped them grow, but now they're trying to clean up the riff-raff and
it's very hard to close Pandora's Box."

Amazon disputed the characterization by merchants and said it has a

thorough vetting process designed to help honest sellers set up
accounts quickly. The company employs more than 8,000 people to
remove counterfeit products, false listings and identify intellectual
property theft. In 2019, Amazon stopped over 2.5 million suspected
bad actors from opening Amazon selling accounts, and blocked more
than 6 billion suspected bad listings, an Amazon spokesman said in
an email.

Walmart has distinguished itself as a safer, less crowded marketplace

than rivals like Amazon, making it easier for merchants to stand out
and sell products. But it is now expected to see a surge of new
vendors after it said last month it will open its online store to
international merchants, which are less accountable to U.S. consumer
protection laws. Walmart has already added over 130 new Chinese
sellers, Marketplace Pulse said.

The retailer said it is actively courting foreign vendors including from

ecommerce giant Flipkart, which is bigger than Amazon in India and in
which Walmart holds a 77% stake. It vowed to maintain quality control.

“We do not plan to lower our bar or change our vetting standards, our
monitoring or management of sellers," Jeff Clementz, Vice President
of Walmart Marketplace, said. “We are aiming to attract the best from
around the world.”

Walmart said its sourcing teams in other countries have begun vetting
potential sellers by their reviews, licensing permissions, reputations
and items.

The business of providing a storefront for outside sellers is, as one

analyst called it, a “secret weapon” for Amazon and a major growth
engine that has caught the attention of Target (TGT.N) and big tech
rivals Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O), which are eager to
expand similar businesses.

Sales generated by Amazon’s third-party vendors totaled $189 billion

last year in the United States, or nearly 60% of the company’s total
U.S. retail ecommerce sales, according to eMarketer data from Insider
Intelligence.

Amazon, which declined to verify these numbers, dwarfs Walmart's

marketplace and is estimated to have more than 3 million sellers on its
U.S. third-party store at the end of 2022, and 7.5 million globally,
according to Marketplace Pulse.

But the lure of Walmart's over 5,000 stores and clubs - more important
than ever as pick-up and delivery hubs take off due to the pandemic -
is a big attraction for many vendors.

“Walmart has something Amazon can’t match: brick-and-mortar

stores. If you do well on Walmart.com, there’s potential you can get
into a regular Walmart,” said Bradley Sutton, who works at third-party
seller consulting firm Helium 10.

"It's like the Holy Grail for vendors. That’s way bigger than Amazon."

'STRATEGIC PRIORITY'

Marketplace’s elevation to what Clementz in June called a “strategic

priority” tracks Walmart’s reinvention from digital also-ran to the No. 2
spot behind Amazon.

The transformation began with the 2016 addition of serial

entrepreneur Marc Lore to lead Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce business.
That year, it agreed to spend $3.3 billion on Lore’s less than three-
year-old Jet.com.

“This company, over time, is going to look like more of an ecommerce

company,” Walmart Chief Executive Doug McMillon said at the time.

By early October 2016, 17 days after joining Walmart, Lore laid out a
strategy that included a plan to not only lure hipper, urban, millennial
shoppers to Jet.com and Walmart.com, but also to make both sites
attractive to smaller merchants.

Lore eyed an opportunity to lure sellers of “more premium-type brands

that don’t typically want to sell on marketplaces” of rivals.

Some vendors described a rigorous process to get on Walmart

Marketplace that can take weeks and includes submitting bank
account information, sales records and social security details.

When Clementz, previously COO of Walmart.com, was put in charge

of Marketplace, the first order of business for the veteran of PayPal
and Intel was to improve “glitchy,” complicated software for listing
products and simplify the process of connecting analytics and delivery
firms for vendors, said sellers.

Walmart spruced up its advertising platform, rolled out software to

protect sellers' intellectual property, launched a delivery and logistics
service, and introduced its version of Amazon Prime, called Walmart+,
a membership program that “100% boosts sales,” according to fitness
equipment merchant Michael Lebhar.

Hoping to address complaints from sellers, Walmart hired “strategic

account managers” who cater to top vendors. On Tuesday, Walmart
emailed vendors to apply for "a chance to win the opportunity to sell"
U.S.-made products in stores.

To sweeten the pot, Walmart has also undercut Amazon on the

commission it takes on sales of some items. Walmart takes a 3%-20%
cut of items sold versus Amazon’s rate of 6%-45%, depending on the
type of product.

The month Walmart opened its market to international sellers, new

vendors were told they would not have to pay a commission at all for a
limited time.

But concessions like this generate concern among some sellers.

“This is alarming and will end up with Walmart having similar

counterfeit or quality issues like Amazon is having,” said Ryan Ebel,
30, a third-party seller from Las Vegas.

Lore, who left the company at the end of January and remains an
advisor, said he is “not worried” about Walmart's expansion to foreign
sellers.

“The magic is finding that white line, the right balance between adding
more assortment but not going down a path of letting anybody on the
platform,” he said.
Walmart digital innovation: 5 takeaways from top tech exec | CIO Dive

Walmart digital innovation: 5 takeaways

from top tech exec
Published Oct. 28, 2021

Catherine Douglas MoranReporter





 

Courtesy of Walmart

First published on

From drone and autonomous vehicle deliveries to adding automated micro-fulfillment

to dozens of stores, Walmart has a reputation for embracing digital innovation.

In the past few months alone, the company has announced it’s testing a text-to-shop
tool and further consolidating its app with universal search and checkout, while Sam’s
Club is developing a new version of its Scan & Go technology and piloting a new app
feature called Scan & Ship that lets shoppers select in-store items to get shipped to
them.
The New Security Dream Team

Learn how CIOs and CISOs can shore up their company’s cyber vulnerabilities, reduce
security risks and improve their digitization plan.

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Walmart is leveraging technology and scale as competitive advantages, especially as it
competes with e-tailer Amazon. In an interview at the Keybanc Technology Leadership
Forum last week, Suresh Kumar, Walmart’s global chief technology officer and chief
development officer, provided a look at how the retailer approaches digital innovation as
it hones in on its omnichannel strategy.

Here are the top five takeways from what Kumar shared.

Courtesy of Walmart

Deciding to build or partner

Walmart has several high-profile technology partnerships, including Adobe and Ford. It
has also gone through several breakups with partners, nixing pickup towers made by
Estonia-based Cleveron and distributed by Bell & Howell, and ending the use of Bossa
Nova Robotics’ shelf-scanning robots for inventory management.

“Given our scale, we want to build and we want to focus our tech on areas that are core
to our business, where ownership actually gives us the ability to be able to adapt the
software to our business needs,” Kumar said, based on a Refinitiv transcript.
But when in-house software is too expensive to roll out in some areas or markets,
Kumar said Walmart will turn to commercial software that can scale to its needs.

“It’s not just about building our technology, and it’s not just about taking the technology,
modularizing it, servicing it and making it available for others, but it’s also about
creating the overall ecosystem so everything kind of builds on itself and everybody ends
up benefiting from that,” he said.

Walmart is also turning technology into a revenue stream, Kumar noted. Its Adobe
partnership, for example, enables Walmart to offer its cloud-based pickup, delivery and
fulfillment services to retailers. This summer, Walmart also started selling its white-
label delivery platform to other businesses.

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Offering cashierless tech

While some retailers, like Amazon, are diving into cashierless stores, Walmart is relying
on offering a range of checkout options.

Cashierless tech has played a major role as Walmart looks to reduce friction and make
checkout as easy as possible, Kumar said. Mobile scan and go, which is available at
Sam’s Club and for Walmart+ members, has so far solved a big customer pain point
around waiting in long lines, he said.

Walmart has tested cashierless technology in stores, including replacing cashiers with
self-serve checkouts at several stores in Canada, creating an “experimental checkout
experience” at a Supercenter in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and opening a
cashierless Neighborhood Market store in Florida.

But Kumar noted that not all customers want to use some or all of the technology
options, so cashiers are needed.

“We will continue to have all of these things,” Kumar said about combining cashierless
tech with cashiers.
Open checkout area at Walmart supercenter in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Courtesy of Walmart

Exploring disruptive technology of the future

As Walmart uses technology to be a leader in retail disruption, Kumar pointed to several

areas the company is exploring that it sees as the most disruptive technology in the
coming years.

Kumar said voice technology is a “very natural extension” of reducing customer friction.
Already, the company has made voice tech available to its
workers: The Me@Walmart app offers a voice-activated personal assistant, called Ask
Sam, that was previously available as a standalone app to some associates.

“I think over a period of time, the most natural way in which you are going to interact
with a system that’s out there, including for shopping, is going to be through voice,”
Kumar said.

Kumar said he’s also excited about doubling down on blockchain, which Walmart primarily
uses for food transparency, particularly with leafy greens. “If there are industry recalls, you can
very, very quickly identify if Walmart received product from the impacted source,” he said.

Walmart is considering blockchain in multiple areas “as a mechanism to be able to

automate the transactions between suppliers, carriers, logistics,” he said, noting that
traceability and transparency with blockchain could potentially tie into regeneration and
sustainability efforts.
Virtual try-ons, which Walmart already offers for clothes, could also apply to home and
outdoor goods with the use of augmented and virtual reality, Kumar said.

“You can take the furniture and you can place it in your living room. Let’s say, you’re
trying to buy a tent ... You don’t want to actually buy it and try to set it up and then find
out that it’s not working for you,” he said.

As technologies continue evolve, their promise ultimately comes down to making

shopping easier.

“I look at it primarily from, is it reducing customer friction? Is it making it easier for

them to shop? And on the back end, is it allowing us to drive insights better and faster
and be able to reason our data more effectively?” he said.

Voice feature on Me@Walmart app.

Courtesy of Walmart

Leveraging machine learning and AI

Walmart has turned to machine learning and artificial intelligence to help save money,
create personalized experiences at scale and make workers more efficient, Kumar said.
For example, Walmart has a predictive basket that uses machine learning and AI to
understand shoppers’ history, preferences and what they typically buy to create an add-
on experience.

Balancing Retail Transformation and Cloud Security

With online shopping surging, the pandemic forced retailers to shift vast amounts of
data to the cloud. Many IT execs now leverage comprehensive cloud security operations
to reduce increasing retail cyber threats.

Learn more

The company is also building out its ability to do omnichannel assortment planning to
figure out which stores need which products out of the millions it offers, and how to
phase those in. “What ML and AI allows you to do is to bring all of that information
together and to be able to synthesize it and to be able to gain insights into that,” leading
to more dynamic management, Kumar said.

Walmart has also employed the technologies to make store associates’ jobs
easier. Its Me@Walmart app, which debuted in June and was built in-house, uses
machine learning, augmented reality, camera vision and AI, letting U.S. associates clock
in on their mobile device, view their upcoming shifts and request schedule changes,
among other features. Kumar said Walmart is currently working on a tool for corporate
workers that is “very similar” to Me@Walmart.

Machine learning and AI are also helping Walmart save money: Its use of machine
learning for markdowns save the company more than $30 million, Kumar said. Earlier
this year, Walmart said it saw shopper acceptance nearly double for substitutions — a
tricky part for online orders that can lead to sales loss and dissatisfaction — since it
started using deep learning AI, which imitates how brains process data and can learn
without human supervision, for online grocery orders.

Placing more focus on safety

Walmart’s customers have stayed focused on value and convenience during the
pandemic, but have increasingly cared about safety, Kumar said.
Kumar highlighted several ways Walmart has used technology to address safety
concerns. For example, the retailer added curbside pickup for pharmacy items last
December and rolled out mobile scan and go — a feature available to Walmart+
members — to all locations.

Shopper using phone at self-checkout station in a Walmart store.

Courtesy of Walmart

Last spring, Walmart made changes to its pickup and delivery services and to Walmart
Pay, which lets people link a payment method in the app and then scan a QR code at a
register, to make shopping more touch-free.

Going forward, Walmart will continue to rely on not just input from its customers who
shop online or in-store, but also observations of what other companies are doing, trends
and what’s talked about on social media to help determine its next digital innovations,
Kumar said.
How Walmart’s Supply Chain Technology Has Helped Serve Customers During the COVID-19
Crisis | by Rohit Jain | Walmart Global Tech Blog | Medium

Rohit Jain
Sep 24, 2020
·
4 min read
·
Listen

(Image designed and owned by Walmart)

How Walmart’s Supply Chain

Technology Has Helped Serve
Customers During the COVID-19
Crisis

Within Walmart’s Supply Chain Technology organization, Technical

Product Managers build, design, and enhance many software products,
systems, and mobile apps that enable our customers to shop online or
in our stores, and allow our frontline associates to serve our customers.
Offerings like two-hour Express Delivery, Spark (Walmart’s home-
grown platform that enables gig drivers to make grocery and last mile
deliveries nationwide), BOPIS (Buy Online and Pick up In Store or
curbside), picking and shipping from stores, and contactless deliveries
are some of the products and experiences these product managers have
built from the ground up. And,I am so proud and humbled to say that’s
my team. We take a great deal of care to make sure these services meet
and exceed our customers’ expectations. But now, during the COVID-
19 crisis, it’s even more important for customers to have a safe,
seamless experience. During this difficult time, a lot has changed in the
way we all live our daily lives, and these changes have come rapidly and
without warning. That means businesses like Walmart need to be able
to make big changes quickly so we can support our customers in the
way that helps them most.

Our priority has always been to help people save money and live better.
Here’s how we’ve been able to do that and what we’re doing to ensure
our customers can continue to get food, medicine, and anything else
they need to keep themselves and their families safe and healthy.
First, we need to take care of those who are at risk within our teams
and communities, as well as abide by local guidelines. For us, that
includes limiting the number of shoppers in a store to ensure social
distancing, regularly deep cleaning and disinfecting our facilities,
making masks and gloves available to our front-line associates along
with many other safety protocols, and offering senior shopping hours
to limit exposure to others while shopping. Our Home Office
associates, including our product and technology teams, are working
from home to minimize the risk of infection per local guidelines. All of
this has driven us to adapt rapidly in these unprecedented times. And if
you are working in supply chain tech like me, you know how the world
has changed. For those who work at Walmart, it has been incredibly
humbling and gratifying to hear from so many people — my friends,
family, and even my doctor — how instrumental Walmart has been
throughout this pandemic. None of that would have been possible
without the amazing speed, nimbleness, and agility displayed by our
engineering, product, and operations teams. Prior to COVID-19, we
had begun working on how to make time slots in Online Grocery more
user-friendly and widely available. However, as the pandemic
expanded in the U.S., we knew we had to change our processes
immediately. With the massive spike in demand, we saw customers
booking slots as far as 7 days out, which left no slots for immediate
purchases. So, we reduced delivery sign-up options from 7 days to 2
days to help ensure we could handle the demand. As we increased our
capacity, we were able to expand our time slots back to 7 days.
Although for some customers this change may have appeared
inconvenient, it ultimately allowed more customers to have access to
Online Grocery, and more importantly, it provided an easy, contactless
way to order and pick up groceries.

For customers who are part of vulnerable communities or are caring

for someone who is, we enabled “At-Risk slots”. Additionally,
customers also wanted the option to receive grocery orders in less than
two hours. While Express Delivery (our less than two-hour delivery
offering) wasn’t created in response to the pandemic, the crisis
accelerated our development cycle. In typical start-up fashion, product
managers and engineers scrappily built the needed technologies to
launch Express Delivery in a matter of days/weeks and then continued
to optimize post launch. Since our launch in April, we are now at full
scale and continue to enhance the experience.

At the beginning of COVID-19’s spread into the U.S., most of our

orders were shipped from Fulfillment Centers (FCs) and we only
shipped online orders to our customers from a limited number of
stores. However, as online orders spiked in a matter of days, our FCs
were stretched. We had to act quickly to alleviate the demand, so in
less than one week we made a critical decision to create and launch the
new process, which required rapid changes to our technology and
business processes and expanded our Ship-from-Store capability to
thousands of stores across the country. All this could not have been
possible without the focus, dedication, and work ethic of my amazing
product and engineering team and partners across the U.S. and India.
And all this while working from home and taking care of themselves
and their loved ones. I am so proud of them!
During this time, there are so many things to worry about, and getting
groceries to feed your family shouldn’t be one of them. Working
through this difficult time has helped us all realize the importance of
making quick, thoughtful decisions so we can continue to make things
a little bit better for our customers.

RIES: Brookings Metro's COVID-19 AnalysisEssential Workers

Amazon and Walmart have raked in billions in additional profits during the pandemic, and shared
almost none of it with their workers (brookings.edu)

THE AVENUE

Amazon and Walmart have

raked in billions in additional
profits during the pandemic,
and shared almost none of it
with their workers
Molly Kinder and Laura Stateler Tuesday, December 22, 2020

THE AVENUE
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JEFF BEZOS AND THE WALMART HEIRS HAVE GROWN
$116 BILLION RICHER DURING THE PANDEMIC—35
TIMES THE TOTAL HAZARD PAY GIVEN TO MORE
THAN 2.5 MILLION AMAZON AND WALMART
WORKERS.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated record profits for America’s biggest
companies, as well as immense wealth for their founders and largest shareholders—
but next to nothing for workers. In a report published last month, we found that many
of America’s top retail and grocery companies have raked in billions during the
pandemic but shared little of that windfall with their frontline workers, who risk their
lives each day for wages that are often so low they can’t support a family.

This is especially true of Amazon and Walmart, the country’s two largest companies.
Together, they have earned an extra $10.7 billion over last year’s profits during (and
largely because of) the pandemic—a stunning 56% increase. Despite this surge, we
ranked Amazon and Walmart among the least generous of the 13 large retail and
grocery companies studied in our report. The two companies could have quadrupled
the extra COVID-19 compensation they gave to their workers through their last
quarter and still earned more profit than last year.
Through the end of 2020, the total additional COVID-19 compensation Amazon and
Walmart will have provided their frontline workers represents only a small fraction of
the companies’ extraordinary earnings, and an even smaller percentage of the
stunning, pandemic-fueled wealth created for their richest shareholders. Stock prices
for Amazon and Walmart have soared 70% and 36%, respectively, since the start of
the pandemic. Meanwhile, worker wages will have grown only 7% and 6% by the end
of the year, even after the new December bonuses that the two companies announced
earlier this month.
Since March, the fortune of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (the richest person on the
planet) has increased by $75.6 billion—42 times the cost of all pandemic hazard pay
that Amazon will have given its roughly 1 million workers through the end of this
year. The wealth of Alice, Jim, and Rob Walton (billionaire heirs to the Walmart
fortune and the country’s richest family) has grown by $40.7 billion since the start of
the pandemic—26 times the total amount of pandemic hazard pay Walmart will have
provided its more than 1.5 million associates by the end of 2020.
These disparities are also striking when broken down by the hour. Through the end of
the year, we calculate that frontline Walmart associates earning starting wages and
working 40 hours per week will earn the equivalent of an extra $0.71 (pre-tax) for
every hour they worked since the start of the pandemic. In comparison, the wealth of
the three Walton siblings has risen $6.2 million per hour, even while they sleep.
Frontline Amazon workers will earn the equivalent of an extra $0.99 per hour (pre-
tax) for each hour worked over the pandemic. Meanwhile Jeff Bezos’ wealth has risen
$11.5 million an hour.

WORKERS ARE RISKING THEIR LIVES FOR ‘PENNIES’

Today, the gap between the extraordinary wealth of Jeff Bezos and the Walton family
and the struggles and sacrifices of frontline workers like Leah, a Walmart associate
who preferred not to use her real name, is wider than ever.
Even before COVID-19 pandemic, Leah struggled to make ends meet. The starting
wage for Walmart associates like her is just $11 per hour—far less than the $16.54 per
hour needed to meet the basic needs of a family, and considerably less than the $15
per hour starting wage at Walmart’s competitors Target and Costco.
During the pandemic, Leah has questioned the sacrifices she makes for a job that
poses a deadly risk to her family but pays too little for her to support them.

“At the end of the day, I am making you

a rich person and I am putting myself at
jeopardy,” said Leah in an August
interview, a Walmart associate who
preferred not to use her real name.
“I’m literally scared,” Leah said an August interview. “I have two children and a
grandbaby. Both of my children have asthma. We are all at risk.”

Leah explained that with a pay increase of just $2 to $3 extra dollars an hour, she
could afford to buy essential items when she needs them most. Walmart’s windfall
pandemic profits could allow the company to easily afford such a raise: In the first
three quarters of 2020, Walmart earned an additional $4.9 billion compared to last
year—a 45% increase. With that, the company could have offered hazard pay to
associates like Leah equating to nearly an extra $2.50 per hour and still have earned
more profit than the previous year, when workers weren’t risking their lives.

Instead, the three one-off bonuses that Walmart paid full-time workers between March
and November were worth an equivalent of only $0.63 per hour. In Walmart’s last
quarter, ending in October, the company did not pay any COVID-19 bonuses at all,
despite earning $1.8 billion in extra profits—a 56% increase compared to the previous
year—and repurchasing $500 million of its shares.

Earlier this month, Walmart announced a new round of bonuses for December.
Combined, the four bonuses will translate to just $0.71 per hour extra for full-time
workers since the start of the pandemic through the end of this year—a 6% pay bump
for a Walmart associate working 40 hours a week and earning starting wages. That is
a fraction of what Leah said she needs just to get by.
“It is really pennies that you are giving me to risk me and my family’s life,” she told
us. “Is it worth taking the risk? At the end of the day, I am making you a rich person
and I am putting myself at jeopardy.”

AMAZON AND WALMART’S COMPETITORS EXCEED

THEIR GENEROSITY

While Leah’s low pay at Walmart has increased only modestly in the pandemic, many
of her peers at competing retail companies earned significantly more COVID-19
compensation, often on top of higher starting wages. Companies like Costco, Home
Depot, Best Buy, and Target provided more generous COVID-19 compensation to
their workers through a mix of bonuses, hourly hazard pay bumps, and permanent
wage increases.

For example, Best Buy’s extra COVID-19 compensation was four and half times
more generous than the extra pay Walmart workers received and more than three
times the extra pay for Amazon workers. The extra COVID-19 compensation for
workers at Target, Home Depot, and Costco was approximately three times more
generous than Walmart and more than twice as generous as Amazon.

“Walmart is not doing enough compared to every other retailer out there,” a Walmart
associate who preferred to remain anonymous told us in an August interview. “They
can afford to do more than they are to show they appreciate the risks we are taking
being out on the frontline making them money.”

The difference between Walmart and Amazon’s generosity and their competitors is
especially striking given the companies’ rhetoric. Since the start of the pandemic,
Walmart and Amazon have lavished their frontline workers with public praise,
including TV ads calling them “heroes.” However, many of Walmart and Amazon’s
competitors were significantly more generous to their workers during the pandemic—
and did so with a lot less fanfare and less additional profit to pay for it.
Costco, for example, drew so little attention to its generous hazard pay—no press
releases, no information on their company website, no TV ads—that we didn’t even
know that the company had sustained its extra $2 per hour hazard pay throughout the
pandemic until a proud Costco employee read our November report and informed us.
The company has quietly spent $14 million of its pandemic profits each week to
compensate its workers, on top of industry-leading starting wages of $15 per hour,
according to a Costco executive who responded to our inquiry. As illustrated in Figure
1 above, Costco’s generosity resulted in an even balance between additional profits
and additional worker pay.

A MORAL IMPERATIVE TO ACT

Amazon and Walmart do not have to provide living wages or hazard pay to their
workers. The prospects of Congress raising the federal minimum wage, mandating
hazard pay, or introducing more sweeping changes likely hinge on the outcomes of
January’s Senate runoff elections in Georgia. And in a weak labor market with
millions of unemployed workers, retail companies may not need to raise wages to
attract applicants to risky work.

But even if these corporate giants are not forced to share their pandemic wealth with
the workers who make it possible, they should anyway. Companies like Walmart and
Amazon have the means—and the moral imperative—to provide higher hourly hazard
pay and raise wages permanently. Their frontline essential workforce, who have
helped nearly all the rest of us get through the pandemic, certainly deserve it.

Grocery workers are keeping Americans alive during the COVID-19

pandemic. Here’s what they need.
Molly Kinder

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The authors would like to thank Julia Du, co-author of the "Windfall profits, deadly
risks" report, for her excellent research support.
Walmart, Target, Best Buy: How Covid-19 Forever Changed Big Box Shopping - Bloomberg

Bloomberg

Pandemic Unleashes
New Big-Box Era
Covid-19 upended consumer behavior, raising the stakes for
Walmart, Target and others as spending shifts away from them
this year.
By
Matthew Boyle
March 16, 2021 at 3:00 PM GMT+3
During Covid, retailers realized the need to shift more of their stores to e-commerce.
Animation: Steph Davidson/Getty(1)
Listen to this article
7:06
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A year of Covid-19 has dramatically accelerated the transformation of big-

box stores into e-commerce warehouses, causing ripple effects for hourly
workers and a struggling real estate sector.
Shopping center mainstays Walmart Inc., Best Buy Co. and others
are becoming fulfillment centers where workers assemble local deliveries and
socially distanced consumers wait in parking spaces for their trunks to be
filled. Space once devoted to t-shirts and TVs will now be used to pick and
pack online orders or generate revenue by displaying ads for big brands like
Samsung.

There’s no going back because consumers have embraced the web like never
before during the pandemic. Stores will be smaller and integrated with digital
operations, or risk becoming irrelevant.

“Today's customer is in charge,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at

Columbia Business School. “They are no longer handcuffed to the mall near
their home. They can browse anywhere and buy anywhere. They are calling
the shots, and they will not relinquish that.”

It was a year ago this week when Covid’s alarming spread pushed retailers
big and small to shutter. Sales plummeted overnight, triggering a rash of store
closures, layoffs and bankruptcies. Meanwhile, chains deemed essential by
local governments, including Walmart, Kroger Co. and Home Depot Inc.,
stayed open and reaped the rewards of booms in cooking and home upgrades
as Americans stayed put.
Traffic Trouble
Retailers had to respond to plunging customer counts with online
initiatives
Source: Placer.ai
But as the pandemic recedes, spending will shift back to dining out, travel
and other leisure experiences—putting more pressure on chains to keep
making shopping easier to meet these new consumer expectations. This next
phase of retail could be as agonizing for the industry as the initial boom in e-
commerce more than a decade ago that wiped out lots of companies. Much
like then, chains that don’t evolve quickly, or have the resources to do so,
will struggle to survive.

“What you will see this year is a rethinking of store space, and how we use
it,” said Mary Brett Whitfield, who leads the shopper insights research team
at consultant Kantar. “Retailers will downscale the size of the store that’s
shoppable.”

Heading into the pandemic, the U.S. still had the most retail square footage
per capita in the world—remnants of a boom starting in the late 1980s. But
Covid triggered record store closures and a reassessment of how to use
physical space. That could bring more pain to lower-tier malls and city retail.
Those sectors have suffered the biggest declines in occupancy rates, rents and
valuations, according to CBRE Group Inc., a real estate services firm. They
will lead an estimated 20% contraction in retail real estate inventory over the
next five years, the group said.
“The customer has completely
changed the way they are thinking of
shopping.”
And the retail industry is betting some of the trends that have ignited this
rethinking of space will outlast the pandemic. For example, nearly three-
quarters of consumers who tried a different shopping method or brand last
year intend to continue with it, according to a survey by McKinsey & Co.
Whether it’s more home-cooked meals or commuting less, “the vast majority
of that behavior is going to last,” Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug
McMillon said last month.

In response, strategic moves that retailers had planned for upcoming years
got pushed into 2020. Lowe’s Cos., Best Buy and Tractor Supply Co. built
curbside pickup systems on the fly so customers wouldn’t have to enter
stores. The rollouts were often clunky, but are being refined. Take Target
Corp., whose mobile shopping app now allows drive-up customers to choose
exactly where in their car they want their bags placed.

In Target’s case, 12 million customers who previously only shopped one way
—in stores, or online—began to do both last year. Those using digital options
like its drive-up service displayed a higher rate of “stickiness,” or likelihood
to shop again, Chief Executive Officer Brian Cornell said.

And the answer isn’t always found online. Target is also opening new “mid-
sized” stores that bridge the gap between traditional big boxes and its small-
format locations, while Burlington Stores Inc. recently doubled its long-term
expansion target to 2,000 locations, most of which will be shrunk-down
versions of its coat emporiums.
Target is opening new “mid-sized” stores to play a key role between its traditional big boxes and its small-
format concept. Above is a location in Brooklyn.

At Best Buy, the electronics retailer reduced the square footage devoted to
displays by nearly half in a handful of locations. That frees up space to fulfill
digital orders, which accounted for 43% of sales during the holiday quarter,
up from 25% just a year ago. The smaller sales floors contain fewer items, a
shift from the chain’s heyday when it displayed row upon row of gadgets. An
initial test of four stores worked well enough that Chief Executive Officer
Corie Barry is expanding it.

“The customer has completely changed the way they are thinking of
shopping,” Barry said. “We are doing all we can to adjust to that new
reality.”

Of course, smaller sales floors mean fewer salespeople are needed. Best Buy
recently jettisoned 5,000 employees as it adapts to a more digital
environment. It’s also training its remaining employees to learn new skills,
like handling video chats with customers.
Walmart’s status as the nation’s biggest grocer paid off last year with
restaurants closed and Americans taking most meals at home. Concerns over
entering stores convinced millions of Americans to embrace online grocery
shopping for the first time last year, boosting sales 54% to nearly $100
billion, according to data tracker eMarketer.

But that surge taxed Walmart’s army of 170,000 employees who dash
through aisles to fill orders for its online grocery service. The world’s largest
retailer responded by carving out space in its cavernous outlets for automated
micro-fulfillment centers that store and pick items, making the process faster
and more profitable. The company has a few in operation now and plans to
open more than 100 of them in the next few years.

Alert Innovation Inc., a startup that designs these futuristic systems, says its
technology will allow for “a new kind of supermarket,” one where shoppers
can still browse for that perfect steak while robots assemble the rest of their
order. With grocery-industry sales expected to decline in 2021 for the first
time in more than 20 years, according to UBS analyst Michael Lasser, food
stores need to take steps now.

International retailers are adapting as well. The European owners of the Zara
and H&M apparel chains both plan to reduce their store counts in 2021 and
put more focus online. With supply chains upended by the pandemic, Zara
owner Inditex SA benefited from investments it made years ago to add radio
frequency identification, or RFID, tags to its garments, providing a real-time
view of its inventory of blouses and skirts.

Stores in the U.S. and abroad will also increasingly serve as proving grounds
for alternate, more profitable sources of revenue, such as advertising, health
care and financial services. Walmart, Target and Kroger have seen the
massive advertising unit Amazon.com Inc. created and want to do the same
by delivering ads for big brands both online and through interactive displays
in their stores. Walmart said last month that its nascent advertising platform,
Walmart Connect, will be bigger than those of media giants like Fox
Corp. and Twitter Inc. within five years.
Retailers “have to get away from just selling items,” Dan Stanek, an
executive vice president at retail consultants WD Partners. “It’s all being
rethought now.”

2021 Walmart Ecommerce Growth: How Walmart is Growing Sales & Revenue
(junglescout.com)

Walmart’s Rise as an Ecommerce Giant

Molly Burke
April 14, 2021
Jungle Scout Data Science, News
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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon has captured the largest share of online shoppers
out of all the leading online retailers serving the U.S. market. Now, there’s growing interest in
Walmart’s ecommerce platform, Walmart.com.

From mid-century discount store to retail behemoth, Walmart continues to grow as it strengthens
its ecommerce presence. In answer to Amazon’s vast product catalog and audience reach,
Walmart.com is gaining consumer favor and attracting ecommerce brands looking to leverage its
growing fulfillment network, Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS).

Walmart’s path to ecommerce success

In 2021, Amazon leads Walmart.com in U.S. customer reach. 73% of American shoppers made
purchases on Amazon in Q1, versus 40% who made purchases on Walmart.com. Whereas
Amazon began as an online retailer and acquired brick-and-mortar retail space decades later, the
much older Walmart followed an inverse path.

Founded in 1962, Walmart had grown to become one of the most prominent U.S. brands by the
late 1980s. By 2002, it reached the number-one spot on the Fortune 500 list, where it has hovered
since.
It wasn’t until 2016 that Walmart broke into ecommerce with its $3 billion acquisition of online
retail site Jet. The move was widely considered a direct effort to compete with Amazon, which
by then had surpassed Walmart as the U.S.’s biggest retailer.

In May of 2020, due to “continued strength of the Walmart brand” and what analysts attributed
to financial losses and operations issues amid the escalating COVID-19 pandemic, Walmart
discontinued Jet and refocused its ecommerce development on Walmart.com.

At the time of the announcement, there was uncertainty over whether Walmart could compete in
the ecommerce field. Today, it seems much more likely that it will become a go-to destination
for online shoppers.

Here’s some promising evidence: while Walmart’s in-store customer base (53% of U.S.
consumers) still leads that of its online store, the latter has risen 13% since 2020. Overall,
Walmart.com is now the third-most-shopped retailer in the U.S., beating out other industry giants
like Target, eBay, and Costco.

Furthermore, Walmart saw high year-over-year growth during the 2020 holiday season, with its
Black Friday and Cyber Monday events boosting Q4 sales 124% from 2019. Toys and
Electronics were Walmart’s strongest categories, earning a combined $85 million in sales
between November 26 and November 30, 2020.

Walmart’s ecommerce division emerged more than twenty years after Amazon, but is rapidly
making up ground with online shoppers.

Walmart.com shoppers are price-conscious

Like most U.S. consumers, Walmart’s online shoppers are changing their behaviors in response
to prolonged economic strain. They’re cutting their overall spending, shopping online rather than
in-store, and are buying more essential products like groceries and cleaning supplies, and fewer
non-essentials such as clothing, home goods, and electronics.

In line with its reputation as an affordable retailer, Walmart serves shoppers that are
experiencing the COVID-19 economy differently than the average consumer. For
instance, nearly a quarter report losing income since 2020, and over half have experienced
financial setbacks in the past year (54% versus 48% of U.S. consumers overall). They’re
adopting money-saving strategies at higher-than-average rates, including researching products
before buying them and contributing to their savings each month instead of spending.

Walmart.com shopper All U.S.

Money-saving method
s consume
 Looking for ways to save money when shopping (e.g., coupons,
83% 75%
promotions, deals)

Becoming more conscientious of spending money 82% 73%

Typically research products before buying 78% 69%

Typically spend time planning or making lists in preparing for shopping

77% 69%
trips

Always look for less expensive products to save money 72% 70%

Set aside savings each month 50% 46%

There’s room for both Amazon and Walmart in ecommerce

As large, inclusive retailers known for convenience and low prices, Amazon and Walmart appeal
to similar American audiences, and their mutual popularity indicates that online shopping is big
enough that consumers will shop on both platforms.

By and large, Walmart.com shoppers are also Amazon shoppers; 77% of Americans who shop
online at Walmart hold Amazon Prime memberships, and 60% make purchases on Amazon at
least weekly. By contrast, exactly half of online Walmart shoppers are members of Walmart+
(Walmart’s equivalent to Prime) — though 23% would consider joining in the future.

But Walmart shoppers are more price-sensitive than the average customer, a characteristic that
leads them away from both Amazon and online purchases in general. When asked why they
haven’t shopped on Amazon recently, Walmart shoppers say they haven’t needed anything
(31%), they’ve been trying to spend less money (27%), and that Amazon’s prices are too high
(15%). Another 9% admit that they just don’t like Amazon.

Walmart Marketplace customers also tend to broaden their search efforts when shopping online.
They’re 40% more likely than average to bypass Google, Amazon, and other search engines to
look directly on a brand or retailer’s site for what they want to buy. They’re also more willing to
use social media channels like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Tik Tok to search for
products.

Where consumers start product searches Walmart.com shoppers U.S. consumer

Amazon 84% 74%

 Search engine (e.g., Google, Bing) 75% 65%

Brand or retailer’s website 53% 38%

Facebook 39% 31%

YouTube 38% 29%

Instagram 26% 21%

Tik Tok 13% 10%

Other social media platform 7% 6%

That’s not to say Walmart shoppers take pains to avoid Amazon. In fact, the majority look to
Amazon for products from specific brands (74%) and when they need fast shipping (71%). Of
course, as Walmart’s online catalog and WFS grow, Walmart shoppers’ preference for Amazon
in these cases may change.

Established ecommerce sellers are expanding to Walmart

As Walmart.com picks up steam with consumers, brands are increasingly looking to sell their
products on the platform, known to sellers as Walmart Marketplace.

Currently, 7% of existing Amazon sellers also list products on Walmart Marketplace, and
another 39% are considering joining the platform this year. WFS is a big draw for ecommerce
entrepreneurs, so much so that 33% of Amazon sellers believe Walmart Marketplace will
compete strongly with Amazon in 2021.

But selling on Walmart won’t be an option for everyone, particularly younger brands without a
proven performance record. Unlike Amazon, Walmart Marketplace limits seller eligibility to
brands with at least a year of operating experience and good standing among customers —
another plus for successful ecommerce sellers, who may face fewer competitors through
Walmart than they would on Amazon.

That said, Walmart Marketplace has opened its eligibility to global brands, meaning U.S. sellers
will soon compete with large ecommerce brands from around the world, including
manufacturing giants in China.
Walmart’s standards are reflected in the types of Amazon sellers that currently also sell on
Walmart Marketplace or are looking to expand there in 2021. The majority are profitable
ecommerce brand owners that fit the following profile:

 Private label business model (72%) with over 10 active product listings (70%; 29% currently sell
over 100 products)
 3 or more years of selling experience (60%)
 Self-employed or exclusively earn income through their ecommerce businesses (57%)
 Profit margins over 15% (60%)
 Lifetime sales over $100,000 (59%)

Walmart’s restrictions on who can sell on their online platform may ultimately result in a very
different marketplace than Amazon. Consumers may benefit from a more vetted catalog, which
could mean higher quality products.

The future of Walmart’s ecommerce business looks bright

Walmart.com’s rising popularity among consumers indicates that it will continue to grow.
Amazon firmly holds its title as the number-one retailer in the U.S., but Walmart’s
differentiation in terms of seller qualifications offers customers an alternative that many are
willing to try.

In any event, Walmart and the many third-party sellers interested in joining it can proceed
knowing that ecommerce isn’t going away anytime soon. After all, 73% of Americans believe
the majority of consumer shopping will happen online in the future — and Walmart.com will be
there to serve them.

75 Essential Walmart Statistics: 2020/2021 Sales, Market Share & Trends | CompareCamp.com

75 ESSENTIAL WALMART STATISTICS: 2020/2021

SALES, MARKET SHARE & TRENDS
written by Arthur Zuckerman May 22, 2020

The American public is well-known around the world as voracious consumers. It is evident with the presence
of various shopping centers and retail stores scattered across the country, and one of the leading brands in the
industry is the big box retailer Walmart.

Walmart and its founder are the embodiment of the American Dream. The Walton family entered the retail
industry with a mom-and-pop store, and in just a span of a few decades, the Walmart brand became one of the
most recognizable names in the world. Additionally, Walmart is the largest employer in the world with over
2.2 million associates in over 27 countries.
In this article, we’ll explore notable and relevant statistics about Walmart to give you a clearer picture of the
company’s operations worldwide. This should give you an idea of how a small business can grow into a global
brand.

Walmart Statistics Table of Contents

1. Walmart Quick Facts
2. Walmart Stores Statistics
3. Walmart Customer Statistics
4. Walmart US Statistics
5. Walmart International Statistics
6. Sam’s Club Statistics
7. Walmart Online Statistics
8. Walmart Employee Statistics
9. Walmart Revenue Statistics
Walmart Quick Facts
Walmart is considered a pillar in the retail industry. Its founder, Sam Walton, had this idea of starting a
business around the idea of offering lower prices and great service—and it proved effective. And in just a span
of 8 years, Walmart opened its doors to the American Stock Exchange by becoming a publicly-traded
company. Since then, the company has continued to expand and widen its reach by penetrating various markets
abroad.

 Walmart was founded by Sam Walton in 1962.

 Its first store opened in Rogers, Arkansas.
 The company’s headquarters is located at Bentonville, Arkansas.
  By 1970, Walmart becomes a publicly-traded company and its first stock is sold at $16.50 per
share.
 Walmart became the fastest company to reach $1 billion in retail sales in 1980.
 The CEO of Walmart is Doug McMillon.
 The Chairperson of Walmart’s Board of Directors is Greg Penner.
 Walmart ranked tenth as the most valuable brands in 2020 with $77.5 in brand value.
 In 2020, Walmart’s ad spent was $3.7 billion.
 In the past 8 years, Walmart spent over $30 billion with women-owned businesses.
 Currently, Walmart is engaged with over 100,000 suppliers across the globe.
 Crossgates Commons in Albany, New York houses the largest Supercenter in the world.
Walmart Stores Statistics
Around the world, Walmart has countless stores ready to serve its customers. Walmart Supercenters, discount
stores, neighborhood stores, and Sam’s Clubs are scattered all over the globe. Currently, all of Walmart’s
stores collectively occupy over a million square feet of land size.

 Walmart stores and subsidiaries can be found in 27 countries.

 Approximately, there are over 11,500 Walmart stores worldwide.
 The average size of a Supercenter is 178,000 square feet.
 For discount stores, 105,000 square feet is the average size.
 Neighborhood stores have an average size of 42,000 square feet.
 Only about 220,000 items are available for next-day delivery.
 As of January 2020, Walmart had 3,200 grocery pickup locations and over 1,600 delivery
locations.
6969260260303020620628286565SupercentersDiscount storesNeighborhood storesMinimum square
feetMaximum square feet0100200300400500600Supercenters (Maximum square feet): 260
Size of Walmart Stores (in Thousands of Sq Ft)
Created by CompareCamp.com

Source: Walmart
Walmart Customer Statistics
It is a fact that Americans love Walmart. For almost six decades, the store has been a major part of their
shopping. The rest of the world has also become familiar with the Walmart brand, and in 2020, Walmart
reported that approximately 265 million people are visiting their stores and websites worldwide.

 Each week, over 265 million customers and members visit Walmart online or in-store.
 In 2015, a study found out that Oklahomans are the top spenders in Walmart with an annual per
capita spending of $1,662.43.
 As of January 2020, Walmart’s next day delivery was available to 75% of the US population.
 Caucasian accounted for 70% of the total Walmart customers in 2016.
 Customers with an income between $25,000 and $49,900 shop more at Walmart.
  In 2016, Baby Boomers were the largest group of Walmart shoppers.
 People aged between 45 and 54 are the most frequent Walmart shoppers.
Walmart US Statistics
Walmart US is the biggest revenue segment for the company. Almost half of their stores are spread across over
2000 cities in the country. Texas remains the state with the most number of Walmart stores and one of its
cities, San Antonio, has 29 of these stores—the most for any American city.

 Walmart stores are located in 2,658 cities in the US.

 The number of Walmart stores in the US was 5,355 in 2020.
 There are 3,571 Walmart Supercenters across the US.
 Texas has the most number of Walmart with the 603 stores.
 San Antonio, TX has the highest number of stores – 29 stores.
 Washington D.C. has the least number of Walmart stores with only 5.
62962956156150850847047044244241541540040038638637637621021028628640740763963966766
77357358008008138138098093029302931583158328832883407340734653465352235223561356135
70357035713571Discount storesNeighborhood
marketsSupercenters20122013201420152016201720182019202001k2k3k4k5k6k
Number of Walmart Stores in the US from 2012 to 2020
Created by CompareCamp.com

Source: Walmart
Sam’s Club Statistics
Walton wanted to help small business owners save money on merchandise purchased in bulk, and his solution
was Sam’s Club. As a membership-only warehouse club, customers need to pay an annual fee of $45 to $100
to be able to shop. Currently, there are almost 600 Sam’s Club stores in the US and its territories, providing
livelihood for over 100,000 associates.

 In the US, there are 599 Sam’s Club operating in 44 states in Puerto Rico.
 The first Sam’s Club opens in Midwest City, Oklahoma in 1983.
 In 1991, Walmart opened its first Sam’s Club in Mexico City through a joint venture with Cifra, a
Mexican retail company.
 In 2018, Samsclub.com had an average of 20.4 million monthly unique visitors.
Walmart International Statistics
The name Walmart first came outside the US in the early 90s. The first foreign market it joined was in Mexico
in 1991. From there, the company continuously expanded to other major countries and territories either by
building a Walmart store or acquiring local companies and making it their subsidiaries.

 6,146 of Walmart stores are outside of the US.

 By 1994, Walmart expands into Canada with the purchase of 122 Woolco stores.
 China had its first Walmart store in 1996.
 Walmart expanded in the United Kingdom with the acquisition of Asda in 1998.
 Walmart entered the Japanese market in 2002 through its investment in Seiyu.
  In 2010, Bharti Walmart opened its first store in India.
 Walmart was introduced to South Africans in 2011.
 As of January 2020, there were 6,100+ pickup and delivery in all Walmart locations globally.
 Currently, Mexico has the most number of Walmart stores outside the US with 2,571 stores.
 India only has 28 stores—the least among countries with Walmart’s presence, so far.

Number of Walmart Stores per Country

Mexico

2,571

Central America

836

United Kingdom

631

Africa

442

China

438

Canada

408

Chile

367

Japan

333

Argentina

92

India

28

Source: Walmart

Created by CompareCamp.com

Walmart Employment Statistics

According to the latest list from Fortune, Walmart is the number one employer in the world. This comes as no
surprise because of the over 11,500 stores they have across the globe. Additionally, Walmart also advocates for
workplace equality.
In its annual report, Walmart employs more women and people of color than the national average, the majority
of which are in management and have revenue-producing responsibility. They are also implementing a
program that allows honorably-discharged veterans to make a living as Walmart associates. The company also
continues to develop its workforce by providing training and seminars.

 Walmart has over 2.2 million associates worldwide.

 In 2020, Walmart employs approximately 1.5 million US associates at more than 5,000 stores
and clubs nationwide.
 700,000 Walmart associates are employed in other stores outside the US.
 Walmart is the largest employer across 22 states in the US.
 In the US, the average, full-time hourly wage is $14.26 for Walmart associates.
 Store managers can earn an annual salary of up to $175,000 in the US.
 There are over 200 Walmart Academies in the US.
 As of March 2019, Walmart Academies trained more than 800,000 employees.
 55% of Walmart’s total US workforce is female and 43% of them are in management positions.
 People of color comprise 44% of the total US workforce and 33% of them are in management.
 26% of Walmart’s IT and Engineering workforce is female.
 By the end of 2020, Walmart committed to hiring 250,000 veterans.
Walmart Online Statistics
Walmart started out as a brick-and-mortar store like most of its peers and competitors at the time. However,
the internet completely changed how businesses deal with customers. Companies like Walmart needed to
capitalize on this new type of market to keep up with competitors that were born and bred in the digital age.

Walmart, however, has proven that it is capable of adapting to this new business landscape. At the beginning
of the new millennium, they established their own website. They also upped their customer service by
introducing business practices that made online shopping easier. These gimmicks made Walmart one of the
leading e-commerce stores worldwide.

 Walmart.com was launched in 2000 that allowed Americans to shop online.

 In 2007, Walmart.com launched its Site to Store service.
 Walmart is the seventh-most popular e-commerce site in the world.
 In the US, Walmart ranks 17th in website traffic.
 Walmart is currently 53rd in website traffic globally.
 In 2019, Walmart had a share of 6% of US online consumer goods sales.
 Over 100 million unique visitors visit Walmart.com monthly.
 Walmart currently sells 60 million different items online.
332332335.5335.5353353333333305.5305.5308308441441469469307307294.5294.5May '19Jun '19Jul
'19Aug '19Sep '19Oct '19Nov '19Dec '19Jan '20Feb '200100200300400500
Total Global Visitor Traffic to Walmart.com from May 2019
to February 2020 (in Millions)
Created by CompareCamp.com

Source: SimilarWeb
Walmart Revenue Statistics
When the age of digitalization came, experts predicted that the era of brick-and-mortar stores was coming to an
end. Many forecasted that the sales of big-box retailers like Walmart will plummet. However, Walmart has
proven to these experts that they are tenacious and highly adaptable.

Seeing it as an opportunity rather than a threat, the Walmart brand made its move towards digitalization, and in
2018, they were declared as the number one leading fast-moving consumer goods retailers worldwide by
revenue.

 Walmart’s reported total revenue was $524 billion as of January 2020.

 Walmart was the number one leading fast-moving consumer goods retailers worldwide in 2018
with $514.41 billion in revenue.
 According to forecasts, Walmart can earn a revenue of up to $400.39 billion in 2025.
 In 2020, Walmart US accounted for 66% ($341 billion) of the total revenue.
 The second-biggest segment is Walmart International which represented 23% ($120.1 billion) of
net sales in 2020.
 Sam’s Club represented 11% ($58.8 billion) of Walmart’s consolidated fiscal 2020 net sales.
Walmart: The Big Question for the Big-Box
It is without a doubt that after almost 60 years in the industry, Walmart has now mastered how it operates its
brick-and-mortar stores. But is the age of brick-and-mortar coming to an end?

Well, the short answer is no.

The brick-and-mortar part of the retail industry isn’t dying—it’s changing. As a matter of fact, Amazon, a
well-known e-commerce brand, is now considering putting up physical stores. Incorporating technology with
the nostalgia of physical shopping is now becoming a retail industry trend.

For example, Walmart has now implemented same-day deliveries for select items, in-store pickups, and more,
to match the services offered by its e-commerce competitors. This makes the whole shopping experience
interesting, convenient and gratifying for customers.

But what do these statistics mean for you?

These statistics reflect the success and achievements that Walmart has enjoyed over the years. Like Walmart,
businesses that provide great customer service reap greater rewards. If you’re looking to improve your
customer retention, you can start with learning about the top CRM tools that can help you.

References:
1. Walmart | Our History
2. Global Powers of Retailing 2020
 3. Walmart | Our New Home
4. Largest U.S. Walmart Supercenter Is Located In Albany NY
5. SimilarWeb | Walmart.com
6. Walmart | Our Business
7. Walmart Inc. 2020 Annual Report
8. Walmart 2018 Annual Report
9. Brand Finance Global 500 2020
10. Walmart | Retail Opportunity
11. Walmart | Veterans and Military Families
12. Fortune | Global 500
13. Breakdown of Walmart shoppers in the United States as of 2016, by race
14. Breakdown of Walmart shoppers in the United States as of 2016, by income
15. Breakdown of Walmart shoppers in the United States as of 2016, by generation
16. Breakdown of Walmart shoppers in the United States as of 2016, by age
17. Amazon concedes market share in battle for online consumer goods sales
18. How AI helped Walmart go from 700,000 to 60 million items online
19. HOW WALMART IS GOING AFTER BRANDS LIKE KELLOGG’S FOR RETAIL AD DOLLARS
20. Walmart explains why it isn’t racing to close its biggest gap with Amazon on next-day delivery
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Wal-Mart fosters innovation culture

by Robbie Neiswanger | June 10, 2017 at 2:11 a.m.
1

Predicting the future of retail is challenging for companies like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. because of
the rapid pace of change taking place with technological innovation.
Greg Foran, chief executive officer of Wal-Mart's U.S. stores, said last week if he were asked to
write down everything that will happen over the next few years, most of it would be wrong.
Foran said he's "just not that smart" at projecting what ideas will and won't stick with consumers.
"What I do know is that you need to have a few things in the hopper," Foran said. "You need to
be prepared to get out there to have a shot."
Wal-Mart spent much of its shareholders week, which ended June 2, demonstrating its
commitment to trying new things, detailing innovations that are being tested and implemented as
the retailer races against competitors to meet the needs of consumers. Those ideas touch nearly
every aspect of the business, from new technology aimed at helping workers perform their jobs
better to services designed to let customers choose how they want to shop at the retailer, whether
it's online, in the store or a combination of both.
ADVERTISEMENT

One of Wal-Mart's newest tests is a delivery service that will pay workers to drop off packages at
the end of their store shifts. The service, which is voluntary for employees, was designed to tap
into what Wal-Mart believes are its advantages -- 1.5 million U.S. employees and 4,700 stores --
to help lower delivery costs and get products to customers quicker.
Marc Lore, Wal-Mart's U.S. e-commerce chief, said the concept has the potential to be a game-
changer. Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon took a more cautious approach. He said to
expect a slow process and added employee delivery will be one piece of Wal-Mart's last-mile
delivery strategy.
Last week, Wal-Mart also revealed it had recently opened an automated grocery pickup kiosk in
Warr Acres, Okla., that will operate 24 hours a day and allow customers to place grocery orders
online and collect them in a minute or less.
Wal-Mart has installed pickup towers -- giant vending machines nicknamed Rapunzel -- at some
stores that quickly dispense items purchased online. The company continues to test grocery
delivery in about 10 stores through a partnership with ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft, which
was announced last year.
"Not everything that we do will actually stick and that's the nature of the business we're in,"
Foran said. "But that's the nature of trying to predict the future."
ADVERTISEMENT

Executives believe the commitment to innovation has played a role in Wal-Mart's success during
a challenging time for retailers. While sales have declined at other big-name chains, Wal-Mart
reported same-store sales growth of 1.4 percent and traffic increases of 1.5 percent in the first
quarter. U.S. e-commerce sales also increased 63 percent.
Sucharita Mulpuru, an independent retail analyst, said last month companies can't expect a 100
percent success rate as they test new ideas. But the chances of developing a successful idea are
much greater for a company like Wal-Mart if they're willing to make their share of calculated
risks.
"I think the hope is very much to do like what Google, Facebook and Amazon have done, which
is kind of throw a lot of things against the wall," Mulpuru said, pointing to Wal-Mart's $3.3
billion acquisition of Jet.com. "If one of the experiments sticks and could be an engine of growth
for the future, that is so worth all of the pain that may come with experiments that fail."
Some ideas have taken hold at Wal-Mart the past two years, including curbside grocery pickup
service. Wal-Mart is continuing to roll out the service -- in which customers order groceries
online, drive to the store and have employees bring them out to their vehicles -- rapidly this year.
Wal-Mart also recognized Senior Vice President Daniel Eckert on June 2 as the company's
annual entrepreneur award winner for the creation and implementation of Walmart Pay, a mobile
payment service.
ADVERTISEMENT

Wal-Mart initially tested the service in a few stores before rolling it out nationwide last year and
the company said last week there had been 7.3 million transactions through Walmart Pay.
"Hopefully one of the themes you've picked up on is we're working on culture," McMillon told
investors June 2 in Fayetteville. "More creativity, more risk taking, more innovation and more
speed. ... You have to work in a different way and you've got to be faster and more creative and
I'm pleased that we're seeing some progress there."
McMillon believes the company has moved away from a time where it was "replicating" ideas to
pushing for innovation. But there is much more work to do because "it's competitive out there."
That's one reason why Wal-Mart set up Store No. 8, a Silicon Valley-based innovation hub,
according to Lore.
He said it's challenging to think about future innovations while operating the business on a day-
to-day basis. So Store No. 8 was designed to identify, invent and invest in ideas like virtual
reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence.
It's hard to identify exactly what commerce will look like in five or 10 years, but Foran believes
his time spent in stores does offer a glimpse as customers increasingly use their mobile devices
to check online prices, inventory and other information as they shop.
ADVERTISEMENT

"You can assume that they're going to want as little friction in this as you can put in place,"
Foran said. "What that all transpires into, I'm not 100 percent sure. What I do try to do and make
sure that all of us do is keep our minds as open as we can to what that may mean and what it may
look like."
Business on 06/10/2017
Print Headline: Wal-Mart fosters innovation culture

Keeping Our Customers Connected

Walmart.com offers a variety of features to serve the needs of our connected customers. It’s part
of our promise of creating convenience at the lowest price, no matter how you shop. Here are
just a few ways we’re helping customers save time and money:

 Walmart App – From Walmart Pay to Mobile Express Returns, prescription refills and grocery
orders with same-day pickup, we help you get more done with just the touch of a button.
 Mobile Scan & Go – Shop and checkout with your phone in-store.
 Curbside Pickup – Order online, pickup in store.
 NextDay Delivery – In many markets, customers can enjoy fast, free shipping on eligible orders
over $35.
 Walmart+ – Membership program that brings together in-store and online benefits.
 Walmart GoLocal – Walmart’s delivery as a service business that provides delivery to customers
from businesses of all sizes.
 But what was treated as an afterthought for years has emerged as an important leg in the world’s
biggest retailer’s long-term strategy to take on Amazon Inc (AMZN.O), which it is battling for
advertising and ecommerce dollars.
 Walmart Marketplace grew to an estimated 70,000 sellers in 2020, fueled by a surge in online
shopping due to the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of investments in technology and vendor
relationships reported here for the first time.
 That is expected to rise 146% by the end of 2022, according to projections by data firm
Marketplace Pulse that have not yet been published.
 The rapid growth is starting to stress the system, some merchants said, a growing number of
whom worry that if the pace picks up, Walmart risks damaging its reputation as a haven for
quality sellers.
 "A year or two ago, every brand on Walmart.com would be trustworthy but now it's getting very
similar to Amazon and that's a huge risk," said Cal Chan, who sells supplements and skincare
products on both Walmart and Amazon. "Amazon let everyone under the sun in - that helped
them grow, but now they're trying to clean up the riff-raff and it's very hard to close Pandora's
Box."
 Amazon disputed the characterization by merchants and said it has a thorough vetting process
designed to help honest sellers set up accounts quickly. The company employs more than 8,000
people to remove counterfeit products, false listings and identify intellectual property theft. In
2019, Amazon stopped over 2.5 million suspected bad actors from opening Amazon selling
accounts, and blocked more than 6 billion suspected bad listings, an Amazon spokesman said in
an email.
 Walmart has distinguished itself as a safer, less crowded marketplace than rivals like Amazon,
making it easier for merchants to stand out and sell products. But it is now expected to see a
surge of new vendors after it said last month it will open its online store to international
merchants, which are less accountable to U.S. consumer protection laws. Walmart has already
added over 130 new Chinese sellers, Marketplace Pulse said.
 The retailer said it is actively courting foreign vendors including from ecommerce giant Flipkart,
which is bigger than Amazon in India and in which Walmart holds a 77% stake. It vowed to
maintain quality control.
 “We do not plan to lower our bar or change our vetting standards, our monitoring or management
of sellers," Jeff Clementz, Vice President of Walmart Marketplace, said. “We are aiming to attract
the best from around the world.”
 Walmart said its sourcing teams in other countries have begun vetting potential sellers by their
reviews, licensing permissions, reputations and items.
 The business of providing a storefront for outside sellers is, as one analyst called it, a “secret
weapon” for Amazon and a major growth engine that has caught the attention of
Target (TGT.N) and big tech rivals Google (GOOGL.O) and Facebook (FB.O), which are eager to
expand similar businesses.
 Sales generated by Amazon’s third-party vendors totaled $189 billion last year in the United
States, or nearly 60% of the company’s total U.S. retail ecommerce sales, according to eMarketer
data from Insider Intelligence.
 Amazon, which declined to verify these numbers, dwarfs Walmart's marketplace and is estimated
to have more than 3 million sellers on its U.S. third-party store at the end of 2022, and 7.5 million
globally, according to Marketplace Pulse.
 But the lure of Walmart's over 5,000 stores and clubs - more important than ever as pick-up and
delivery hubs take off due to the pandemic - is a big attraction for many vendors.
 “Walmart has something Amazon can’t match: brick-and-mortar stores. If you do well on
Walmart.com, there’s potential you can get into a regular Walmart,” said Bradley Sutton, who
works at third-party seller consulting firm Helium 10.
 "It's like the Holy Grail for vendors. That’s way bigger than Amazon."
 'STRATEGIC PRIORITY'
 Marketplace’s elevation to what Clementz in June called a “strategic priority” tracks Walmart’s
reinvention from digital also-ran to the No. 2 spot behind Amazon.
 The transformation began with the 2016 addition of serial entrepreneur Marc Lore to lead
Walmart’s U.S. ecommerce business. That year, it agreed to spend $3.3 billion on Lore’s less
than three-year-old Jet.com.
 “This company, over time, is going to look like more of an ecommerce company,” Walmart Chief
Executive Doug McMillon said at the time.
 By early October 2016, 17 days after joining Walmart, Lore laid out a strategy that included a plan
to not only lure hipper, urban, millennial shoppers to Jet.com and Walmart.com, but also to make
both sites attractive to smaller merchants.
 Lore eyed an opportunity to lure sellers of “more premium-type brands that don’t typically want to
sell on marketplaces” of rivals.
 Some vendors described a rigorous process to get on Walmart Marketplace that can take weeks
and includes submitting bank account information, sales records and social security details.
 When Clementz, previously COO of Walmart.com, was put in charge of Marketplace, the first
order of business for the veteran of PayPal and Intel was to improve “glitchy,” complicated
software for listing products and simplify the process of connecting analytics and delivery firms for
vendors, said sellers.
 Walmart spruced up its advertising platform, rolled out software to protect sellers' intellectual
property, launched a delivery and logistics service, and introduced its version of Amazon Prime,
called Walmart+, a membership program that “100% boosts sales,” according to fitness
equipment merchant Michael Lebhar.
 Hoping to address complaints from sellers, Walmart hired “strategic account managers” who
cater to top vendors. On Tuesday, Walmart emailed vendors to apply for "a chance to win the
opportunity to sell" U.S.-made products in stores.
 To sweeten the pot, Walmart has also undercut Amazon on the commission it takes on sales of
some items. Walmart takes a 3%-20% cut of items sold versus Amazon’s rate of 6%-45%,
depending on the type of product.
 The month Walmart opened its market to international sellers, new vendors were told they would
not have to pay a commission at all for a limited time.
 But concessions like this generate concern among some sellers.
  “This is alarming and will end up with Walmart having similar counterfeit or quality issues like
Amazon is having,” said Ryan Ebel, 30, a third-party seller from Las Vegas.
 Lore, who left the company at the end of January and remains an advisor, said he is “not worried”
about Walmart's expansion to foreign sellers.
 “The magic is finding that white line, the right balance between adding more assortment but not
going down a path of letting anybody on the platform,” he said.




Walmart is the world’s largest retailer, with over 11,000 stores in 27

countries. In order to maintain its position as a retail leader, Walmart must
continue to innovate and evolve its strategic management practices. The
following are three recommendations for Walmart’s future strategic
direction:

1. Increase focus on e-commerce

In recent years, Walmart has made significant investments in e-commerce,

including acquiring online retailers Jet.com and ModCloth. However, these
acquisitions have not been enough to make Walmart a major player in the e-
commerce space. In order to compete with Amazon and other online
retailers, Walmart needs to increase its focus on e-commerce. This includes
investing in more online retailers, building out its own e-commerce platform,
and offering more online services such as grocery delivery.

2. Expand internationally

Walmart has a strong presence in the United States, but it lags behind other
retailers when it comes to international expansion. In order to maintain its
position as a global retail leader, Walmart needs to expand its operations
into new markets. This could include countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America. Additionally, Walmart should consider expanding its e-commerce
offerings into international markets.

3. Improve customer service

One of the areas where Walmart has been criticized in recent years is
customer service. In order to improve its reputation and attract more
customers, Walmart needs to focus on improving its customer service. This
includes hiring more employees, training employees better, and offering
more services such as in-store returns and exchanges.

Online shopping has been a regular occurrence for customers every year, not
just in the US but globally. It’s not only more convenient for shoppers, but
they also have access to a wider variety of items and can do so discreetly.
Furthermore, online retailers often offer better prices than brick-and-mortar
stores. While Wal-Mart may sell products cheaply that customers want, their
physical locations aren’t always convenient or conducive to discretion.

In other words: the online presence of Wal-Mart is not as strong as it could

be. The current strategic focus of Wal-Mart should be to increase and
improve their online sales capabilities in order to compete with the likes of
Amazon, eBay, and other online retailers. In order to do so, Walmart needs
to focus on a few key areas: first, they need to make sure that their website is
user friendly and provides a good customer experience; second, they need to
make sure that they have a wide variety of products available for purchase
online; and third, they need to focus on getting their prices down to match or
beat the prices of their competitors.

If Walmart can successfully improve their online presence, they will be able
to increase their customer base, which will in turn lead to increased sales and
profits.

The most important recommendation to consider is that consumers should

be able to return goods bought through an internet website if they are not
satisfied with them. This is because online purchasing is global by nature.
Since Amazon currently dominates the online shopping industry, and has
seen their sales grow from $15 billion to $61 billion over the last five years,
it’s clear that they’re operating some kind of magic.

To compete with Amazon, Walmart has to establish a very clear strategic

plan.
First, they need to improve their website design and layout. The current
website is not user-friendly, which makes it difficult for customers to find
what they are looking for.

Second, Walmart needs to focus on their delivery times and offer free
shipping with no minimum purchase. Currently, Amazon offers free shipping
on orders over $25 and delivers within two days.

Third, they need to improve customer service both online and in-stores.
Customers should feel like they are valued and that their concerns are being
heard.

Fourth, Walmart needs to create a more seamless experience for customers

who shop both online and in-store. Customers should be able to order online
and pick up in-store, or vice versa.

By following these strategic recommendations, Walmart will be better

equipped to compete with Amazon and other online retailers. With a strong
focus on customer service, delivery times, and website design, Walmart can
improve their online presence and sales.

The demand for healthier and organic options is a potential business

opportunity for Wal-Mart. According to a recent survey, people’s fat intake
has decreased in the last decade. This information shows that the general
public is prepared to improve its health and diet – a big customer base
Walmart can’t afford to ignore. Through nutrition education and
dissemination initiatives, both governments and private organizations have
attempted to persuade Americans to eat healthier diets.

The USDA’s “MyPlate” campaign is one recent initiative with this goal. MyPlate
replaced the former food guide pyramid and provides consumers with a
simple way to make healthier choices. The message is clear – fruits,
vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy should make up the majority of
what we eat each day, with lean protein and healthy fats in moderation.
Unfortunately, Wal-Mart has been lagging behind in responding to this trend.
In 2006, Wal-Mart announced plans to offer more organic foods. However,
the company has not followed through on these promises, and their organic
food selection is still quite limited. They have also been slow to respond to
the trend towards natural and free-from foods, as evidenced by their lack of
gluten-free products.

Given Wal-Mart’s vast resources, it is surprising that they have not been more
aggressive in capitalizing on these trends. However, there are a few potential
explanations for this slow response. First, the company may be hesitant to
make significant changes because their current business model is working
well and is very profitable. Second, Wal-Mart may be waiting to see how
these trends play out before making any major investments.

Despite their slow response so far, there is still an opportunity for Wal-Mart
to take advantage of these trends. They should move quickly to expand their
organic and natural food offerings, as well as their selection of gluten-free
products. In addition, Wal-Mart should consider revamping their overall
grocery selection to better reflect the current trends in American diets. By
doing so, they can tap into a growing market of health-conscious consumers
and solidify their position as a leading grocer in the United States.

Walmart Organization's Innovation Strategy and Practices | Business Paper Example (business-
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Walmart Organization’s Innovation Strategy

and Practices
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Business Functions, Their Key Activities & Objectives and Performance Measures in the
Walmart Organization
Walmart is an American-based multinational store that has many hypermarkets, discount points,
and grocery stores, and it has its headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. The firm was founded by
Sam Walton in 1962 and was incorporated under the Delaware business. It falls under the retail
industry, and it has more than 11,000 stores all over the world (Zhang, 2018, p. 40). This paper
analyses the innovation that Walmart has been doing in regard to the business portfolio.

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Summary of the Organization

Walmart is known for engaging in retail and wholesale entrepreneurship by offering an

assortment of services and merchandise at lower prices. Walmart operates through various
business segments such as Walmart US, Walmart International, and Sam’s Club. The consumer
products that Walmart operates include the eCommerce brands, Walmart market portfolio, and
Walmart.com. The company’s international segments also manage warehouse clubs, cash, and
carry, which may comprise members-only (Meeks and Chen, 2011, p. 6). Recently, the retail
company has acquired virtual fitting room platforms as a step into fashion ways.

Walmart operates under four core values that have ensured there is a unique strategy that makes
the company progress amidst many rival firms such as amazon. The four values include service
to clients, respect for the person, striving for excellence, and integrity actions. Additionally, the
company has a ser of other corresponding habits that enable a practice by every associate un
helping to deliver business that makes the firm has a flexible working culture for the workforce
(Meeks and Chen, 2011, p. 4). Walmart has been ranked as one of the developing retail
industries due to the role it plays in product and service development in the US and the entire
world.

Walmart’s Business Functions

The first function is marketing, which has been implemented through the setting of prices that
have to ensure consumer satisfaction is achieved. (Chesbrough, Vanhaverbeke and West, 2017,
p. 88). The second function is research and development (R&D), with the objectives of
maintaining the crowd and utilizing social media tools. The third function is human resource
management, and lastly, the function is supply chain management.

Marketing and Sales Function at Walmart

Walmart is known to be effective when it comes to marketing its products. The reason why the
company has thrived beyond many rival firms is the ability to carry out market research that
gives the company an actual share in the market. The main objectives of marketing are to ensure
that there is awareness of the products offered to customers, to add to reputation, and to make the
products segmented effectively (Christensen, Raynor, and Van Bever, 2013, p. 145). The key
activities that are done concerning marketing for Walmart are product promotion. Walmart has
perfected the art of running effective promotional strategies with a range of available discounts
to buyers. The other activity under marketing is the use of low-price-based slogans such as ‘save
money, ‘worry-free fresh’ are key measures that ensure the promotional aspect is done
effectively. The third activity is marketing research which is evident through investing in
shopper data, especially in grocery stores. The performance measures include the rate at which
Walmart’s products are purchased in the market and also the extent to which consumers are
willing to come back for the same products and services. For example, 45% of grocery buyers
who like ordering online prefer to use Walmart’s mobile application (Wieland, 2020, p. 65).
Additionally, Walmart has gained loyal clients such as Taco Bell restaurants who transact with
them on a daily basis.

Human Resource Management Function at Walmart

The HRM function at Walmart is large scale due to the number of employees the company has.
The objectives for HRM are to ensure that there is employee productivity, sales personnel
efforts, and provision of resources that enable a smooth transition of the business. (Pateli and
Lioukas, 2017, p. 236). The main objective is to give the stakeholders employees who are
competent and who can bring new issues to keep the business thriving. The company uses retail
industry criteria in the selection process (Ziegler, 2015, p. 187). The retention of employees is
executed by having evolving compensation policies and career development aspects. The
company ensures that staff is not humiliated by unruly customers or fellow staff members.
Therefore, in case of such issues, there are resolving ways that the firm uses, for example,
arbitration through the labor unions in respective countries (Ziegler, 2015, p. 186). The
performance measures have been seen through low rates of staff turnover. For example, in the
US, the rate of staff shifting to other companies has reduced from 17% to 9% in the last five
years (Pateli and Lioukas, 2017, p. 229). Therefore, the company has confidence that the HRM
function is working to ensure there are n working drawbacks within the company. The human
resource function has ensured that the workforce is diversified by hiring workers from different
ethnic groups in the world.

Research and Development at Walmart

The main objective why R&D is done by many firms is to get new strategies for working in the
same product or service line. For Walmart, their R&D is focused on crowd management systems
and the identification of digital microservices. The key activities done under the business
function is a shift from retail route planning to augmented realities for sales assistance (Pride,
2017, p.56). The second way in which research and development are done is through
collaborating with research institutes to bring new methodologies of working on business
constraints. Social media is another way in which Walmart wanted to research the feasibility of
the tool. The ideas serve to keep the company updated with methods of aggregating useful
information and data for moving the business in the right way. The performance measures are
evident through the increasing numbers of buyers who have adopted the company’s ways of
doing business. (Pride, 2017, p. 66). The second performance measure is the level of excitement
that customers have when they find satisfactory products that are negotiable. For example,
Walmart’s R&D team has led to the development of digital marketing using channels such as
YouTube and Facebook. The other example is that Walmart stores in the UK are known for
letting customers express the price they are willing to pay when they realize more developed
products in the stores.

Walmart’s Supply Chain Management

Effective supply chain management has led to several ways in which sustainable business can be
achieved. Through the business function, there have been sustainable competition strategies such
as low prices and reduced inventory carrying, among other issues (Wade, 2014, p. 780). The
main objective of supply chain management at Walmart is to ensure there are sufficient supplies
in the stores, a step towards ensuring effective customer service and hence higher levels of
satisfaction (Reimann and Ketchen, 2017, pp. 3-6). The other reason why the function is
implemented at Walmart is to prevent any functional challenges within the departments. The
performance measures that can be drawn from the function are the communication and
relationship networks with suppliers to make sure there is improved material flow with lower
stock. As a result, the network of suppliers in the world has been said to act as one single firm.
Activities, in this case, include stocking where Walmart’s truck fleet delivers goods to the stores
hence ensuring there is frequent and stable supply. Other activities are bookkeeping, and stock
takes to monitor the rate of usage of the products. In the performance measure, for example,
fresh products such as kales are delivered in low quantities to ensure that there is no waste due to
perishability. For example, the network of suppliers at Walmart has led to Funai Electric
Company getting 50.8% of overseas sales (Noble, Griffin, and Durmusoglu, 2014, pp. 112-116).
The other example is that Green Dot Corporation has partnered with Walmart to Tailfin Labs
accelerators.

The Concept of Innovation and the Application of Innovative Change in the Context of
the Walmart Organization

Innovation and Application of Innovative Change

The meaning of the term innovation is the development and utilization of ideas that are meant to
improve the way issues are performed and achieved (Pride, 2017, p. 67). Through innovation,
there are new products, processes, and improved changes that make the business progress
linearly (Aguinis and Lengnick-Hall, 2012, p. 284). The benefits of innovation include improved
skills in doing business which raises the ROR and leads to competitive advantage (Alam et al.,
2013, p. 59). Additionally, innovations develop the capabilities hence making employees
relevant to the market (Reimann and Ketchen, 2017, pp. 6). Drawing from Tidd, Bessant, and
Pavitt’s line of argument, innovation is a combination of ideas that propose something new and
which has a different approach to what exists already (Reimann and Ketchen, 2017, pp. 5).
Therefore, the construction of the ideas into something significant makes an invention because
the aspect is out of the abstract field and comes to the practical realm.

Walmart’s Innovation Strategy

Walmart uses incremental innovation instead of radical innovation. In this case, incremental
innovation means Walmart is dedicated to making minor changes gradually, which later impact a
huge transformation of business (Bocanegra Gastelum, 2019, p. 97). Walmart is an example of
disruptive innovation because it appeals to the customers who are less demanding and ay want
convenient and low-priced solutions (Barth and Sau, 2014, p. 12). The other way in which
incremental innovation in Walmart is evident is through entry into the market with a simple
structure that is based on low prices. For instance, Walmart has made a step in new features such
as integrated store maps that have been enabled in more than 160 locations. Secondly, the new
feature in Walmart application enables the buyers to enter the items in a more natural language,
such as ‘chips,’ ‘popcorns,’ and ‘coffee maker’ (Barth and Sau, 2014, p.30). Incremental
innovation has led to Walmart’s shift to the modern ways of doing business.

Disruptive Innovation at Walmart

Disruptive innovation refers to the process by which a company transforms an expensive and
comprehensive product or service to make it simpler and more affordable to many people in the
market (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 18). Walmart is using disruptive innovation by destroying the
current model to reshape retail. First, the company has a door-to-door delivery program for self-
driving cars. Secondly, customers can order online and pick up their items at a kiosk. Lastly,
groceries can be delivered to the customer’s car doors (Barth and Sau, 2014, p. 12). Disruptive
innovation has led to higher levels of customer satisfaction because buyers can order what they
like and access it at the Walmart kiosks that are built at various points in the world. The
challenge with disruptive innovation is that there are cases of wrong delivery and lateness
(Chatterjee, 2017, p. 22). It may happen if the customers sent to deliver to other clients have
other plans along the way.

Open Innovation at Walmart

Open innovation refers to the idea of creating a specific theme by different companies under a
defined theme. In the case of Walmart, open innovation uses customers as couriers. That means
customers would be delivering goods to the doors of other customers rather than the retailer
(Barth and Sau, 2014, p. 12). The approach works by hiring space in people’s vehicles which
would take the orders to the respective groups. (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 17). In that way, there are
new methodologies that may come to have an impact on the business performance. The benefits
of open innovation to the company are that it has increased the revenue due to the high rate of
deliveries using other buyers (Bocanegra Gastelum, 2019, p. 120). The challenges include the
security of the products and late deliveries. Security is a major issue because some customers
may not be straight, and they may have malicious attempts.

Walmart’s Complementary Innovation

The Abernathy and Utterback Model argues that many product innovations occur during the
initial stages, and it may include the specific design that is realized for a given product to
targeted customers. Walmart practices such innovation by offering a wide range of products such
as grocery, hardware, health products, and entertainment equipment (Bocanegra Gastelum, 2019,
p. 97). To have the business aspect in place, Walmart combines all the product lines to make it
one hence ensuring there is a competitive advantage. The benefits are that the company ensures
there is business sustainability which is key in ensuring people have work to do (Jens, 2021, p.
4). That is important to keep employees working for the company while developing their skills in
the customer service line (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 18). The challenge may be a lack of unique
specialization where competition may be disadvantaged due to other key firms in a similar
business.

Although Walmart has made many specific approaches toward innovation, there is still a need to
have more strategies to promote organizational conditions toward innovation. For instance,
Walmart can make efforts to give staff flexible time to explore more effective ways that can
improve the services (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 18). Employees can have shifts of six hours while two
hours are dedicated to realizing other strategies to promote the business. Furthermore, Walmart
needs to incorporate cloud software that uses microservices architecture in doing business. For
instance, financial reporting can be done in a central system that does not alter from other
programs (Kim and Min, 2015, 40). In that way, there would be a transition from monolithic
ways of transactions to more modern ways of business.

Innovation and Business Performance

An innovative organization incorporates new ideas, methods, and processes into the
organizational product or service line. The major benefits that an organization may get from
innovation are improved methodologies of conducting business, an increase in revenue, and
expansion of the business portfolio (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 22). Organizations that are innovation-
centric share various characteristics, such as focusing on communication at all levels of the
organization. Walmart has adapted to the culture of the innovative organization because it has
been employing people with managerial experience to manage the stores globally. Additionally,
it has centered its work on technology by having mobile applications and also researching
current trends in consumer behavior (Jens, 2021, p. 4). The challenges along the way are that
Walmart has faced issues such as customer dissatisfaction when orders are delayed or get lost.

Training and Development at Walmart

Innovation comes with new ways of doing business, and therefore, it requires employees to have
new skills. Walmart has not been left behind when it comes to training and development as it has
invested in training programs for its workers (Kim and Min, 2015, 37). For instance, the new
change in product development has occurred through seminars that are made to sensitize workers
on how to adapt to new working methods. The company has used both on-the-job and off-the-job
to train workers (Kim and Min, 2015, 38). Walmart is known for using Business Leadership
Series (BLS) as a unique training program. Due to training and development, staff has been more
motivated to work on their lines, and they have led to higher productivity. Dabble time refers to
the portion of time that is approximated to be 15%, which is dedicated to new ideas and
initiatives (Kim and Min, 2015, p. 45). Walmart can have workers work for six hours while two
hours are dedicated to their research. The benefit would be that different procedures would be
realized, enabling more growth.

Competition Between Project Teams

The third characteristic of Walmart, an innovative company, is through allowing competition
within the departments. To make sure that the company has innovative objectives, the staff are
given the liberty to compete in terms of who can have a better methodology in working on
various issues (Jens, 2021, p. 4). For instance, the marketing team can have inner divisions to
enable people to develop unique strategies for winning the hearts of consumers (McGee, 2020, p.
19). Research and development tea can take part in exhibitions in the industry, which enable
them to gain new ideas.

Walmart’s Organizational Structure

Walmart has adopted a flatter organizational structure that enables achieving various
environmental approaches to business. Walmart did that by cutting staff to effectively
collaborate and incorporate frequent reassessment of tasks (Jens, 2021, p. 4). More than 450
members at the headquarters have retrenched, a move that was said to enable fast entry to the
marketplace (Morillo, McNally and Block, 2015, p. 401). The remaining employees were willing
to adapt to the changes that would come on their way. The benefit that is gained from agility is
that functions such as retailing are not affected since more emphasis is laid on purpose.

Walmart shares most of the features of innovative companies because of the market structure.
People who buy products are the same for all organizations, and hence, there would be no huge
gap in the methods (Morillo, McNally, and Block, 2015, p. 399). The organizational conditions
that enabled innovation to occur were the need to have a competitive advantage, the quality of
leadership, and a culture of improved functions every time (Jens, 2021, p. 4). The company has
benefited through getting a firm consumer line and also the increased profit margins. The
leadership has encouraged staff to have personal development in regard to product design. As a
result, many employees form workgroups to identify the specific measures that they have to take
to realize a unique line that would be added to the portfolio.

Organizational culture refers to the distinct ways of doing business by the use of proper ways to
behave within an organization. Organizational culture can necessitate innovation due to the
specific motives that come along the way. Walmart has perfected the art of organizational culture
by having cross-functional work and taking risks within the business line. For instance, the
company has ventured into selling well-being products such as gymnasium equipment (Ollila
and Yström, 2016, p. 367). Although many people may know Walmart for groceries, having
such a portfolio included shows there is a culture of the invention in the company. As a result,
Walmart has been the largest company by revenue in the world hence beating other rival firms
such as Amazon and others.

Walmart is also known for making entrepreneurship strategies that are more about taking risks
and targeting profits. There are many uncertainties, but Walmart has not been dragged around by
what many entrepreneurs fear in business. The company has ensured that people work in teams
to find whether there may be any issues that give constraints when working (Ollila and Yström,
2016, p.366). The risk management team has played 65% of the responsibilities related to
business feasibility. The impacts of Walmart in taking such a step are that there has been the
emergence of many chains in the world having the same methodology, which increases
competition. Walmart has kept the efforts to find better ways to practice business in competitive
markets.

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Walmart has been on the frontline to encourage transformational leadership that is concerned
with more liberty to grow the company from an employee perspective. Leaders do not need just
defy what is expedited to be done. Rather they include the junior staff in developing a framework
that will enable the proper realization of goals. In the US, for example, leaders are expected to
get reports from staff on where there are opportunities that may benefit the company
(Padmanabhan and Zhang, 2018, p.93). Through such initiatives, Walmart has experienced
progressive business with low staff turnover. The challenge of staff turnover has been settled by
having employee incentives in the form of flexible time. Furthermore, the workforce has shown
skills in acting like leaders when they are not.

Potential Causes of Failure of Innovation Activities in the Context of the Walmart

Organization

Innovation and Business Performance

Even though Walmart has committed to ensuring that there is effective transformation, there are
issues that, if not managed, innovation can fail to occur. Innovation failure refers to the condition
when new processes and steps do not have any value to an organization (Jens, 2021, p. 4). The
major drawback is that failing innovation leads to loss as revenue must be invested in the process
(Silva, Styles, and Lages, 2017, p. 400). The four potential causes of failure in innovation
include poor communication from the management to employees, lack of financial resources to
maintain the new approaches, lack of effort to understand the customers, and fear of failing.
When the issues are not approached for rectification, innovation failure can occur.

Major Causes of Innovation Failure

For Walmart, the innovation failure cause is likely to be the lack of alignment between the
proposed product or service and the needs of the market. When the product design is not fit the
market, it can lead to low purchases (Stankevičiūtė, Grunda, and Bartkus, 2012, p. 6). In this
case, if Walmart introduces methods such as autonomous delivery, which may have issues of
security and promptness, many people will not utilize it, and the machines designed to effect the
change would be less useful (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 18). In that case, it would be caused by a lack
of research on the practicability of the process in the real market. The impact would be a loss of
revenue which would render the machines useless. To correct this, Walmart may be
recommended to take market research on how to improve the process for profit realization while
considering linear workflow within the firm.

Poor communication is another key issue that may lead to innovation failure at Walmart. It can
apply when the employees do not know how to leverage the new changes hence making the
process have drawbacks. Employees need to see where the changes should apply and why there
is the essence to shift to the new process (Stankevičiūtė, Grunda, and Bartkus, 2012, p. 7). Most
of the time, when the human workforce lacks the motivation to make changes in their product
and service lines, they will not take part in the training and development programs. The impact
would be damages that may come when people are not accurate on what they do concerning a
certain process. For example, if the information and technology department does not have a
correct way of tackling the cyber kill chain, customers’ data will be accessed by malicious
people (Chang and Hu, 2020, p. 18). That would lead to liabilities when Walmart is subjected to
legal obligations.

Lack of financial resources may render Walmart’s innovation strategies fail. Any change in an
organization requires implementation by having resources that will push it. (Zhang, 2018, pp.34-
37). On that note, the company needs to have money to sponsor the training for the new
production steps. Without resources, the effect would be felt on the company’s revenue
generation (Chatterjee, 2017, p. 18). To prevent such issues, Walmart can rely on loans from
international banks such International Monetary Fund (IMF). In circumstances when resources
are limited, work is down half-complete, and there might arise collisions that may lead to staff
turnover. For innovation to continue in the right manner, Walmart management must work
diligently to get avenues of getting substantial cash in from the stakeholders. The drivers of
changes in the firm must consider the sources of funds before recommending a new way of doing
business within the organization across all the chains in the world.

Any potential failure in innovation can be prevented by weighing risk levels that would result in
any step made. Risks can be forecasted and prevented from happening (Ziegler, 2015, p. 186).
One of the ways to bar risk from occurring is by stopping a certain course of action, such as the
need to develop services or products (Ziegler, 2015, p. 189). Walmart, upon introducing a hard to
realize innovation, can apply the fail early, fail cheaply ethos by withdrawing from the venture
earliest time possible.

References
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a call for evidence-based human resource management, Human Resource Management Review,
22(4), pp.281-284.

Alam, S., Arumugam, V., Mohd Nor, N., Kaliappan, P. and Fang, L. (2013) ‘Relationships
between innovation capabilities, business performance, marketing performance and financial
performance: a literature review’, Business and Management Horizons, 1(1), p.59.

Barth, J., and Sau, M. (2014) ‘Walmart: The new Go-To Bank’, SSRN Electronic Journal,
16(45), pp.12-30.
Bocanegra Gastelum, C.(2019) ‘Walmart: competitive crossroads in the Chinese retail
market. México y la Cuenca del Pacífico, 8(22), pp.89-120.

Chatterjee, S. (2017) ‘Two efficiency-driven networks on a collision course: ALDI’s innovative

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IMG Analysis: Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, BCG Matrix

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BusinessEssay. (2022, October 13). Walmart Organization's Innovation Strategy and
Practices. Retrieved from https://business-essay.com/walmart-organizations-
innovation-strategy-and-practices/