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For example, Walmart expects US comparable sales to grow between 2% and 2.5% for the full year, excluding fuel sales. The big takeaway: While most media reports focus on MoM retail sales numbers, we find that perspective is often noisy. Zooming out to look YoY, or YoY across multiple months, you can see that consumers continue to spend.

Retailers across a broad array of categories—including Target, Walmart, Dollar General, and Steve Madden— all recently offered cautious guidance, underscoring the uphill battle for Lowe’s.

Walmart and TalkShopLive aim to position livestream shopping as a form of entertainment by recruiting celebrities such as E! News hosts to attract viewers. Meanwhile, YouTube last year partnered with Shopify to launch an integrated livestream shopping platform. The big takeaway: It is easy for US retailers to be enticed by the huge livestream sales numbers in China.

Walmart in September rolled out three new returns options: an extension of its returns policy so that eligible purchases made on or after October 1 can be returned through January 31, 2023; curbside returns that enable shoppers to drop off items from their vehicles; and returns pickup from home for Walmart+ members in select locations without the need to provide a box or a label.

Article: Amazon’s struggles give Walmart an opening.

Notably, Walmart launched a new section of its website called Walmart Restored. Lululemon Athletica, Cuyana, and Another Tomorrow are some of the brands launching their own resale. Fashion resale platforms are growing and diversifying. For instance, Rebag is venturing into luxury footwear and apparel resale, putting it in direct competition with more established platforms like The RealReal.

Story two, Walmart's version of Prime called Walmart Plus, offers free shipping, discounted gas prices and more for nearly $100 a month. And apparently, Walmart's membership program is resonating with affluent shoppers, writes Insider intelligence's retail analyst, Rachel Wolff. She notes, "28% of US households making over $150,000 were subscribed to Walmart Plus as of February.

For example: Walmart is introducing ad spots to Walmart’s in-store radio, giving suppliers the ability to purchase ads by region or by store. The retailer’s massive physical presence gives advertisers a unique opportunity to reach a wider spectrum of consumers, including those that don’t shop online.

Article: Walmart beats expectations in Q2 as inflation drives shoppers across income brackets to seek deals. Article: Target’s Q2 profit plunges 90% as it unloads unwanted inventory.

Walmart ranked fourth and was the only traditional retailer in the top 10. Social commerce—primarily a mobile experience—is increasing rapidly. We estimate that US social commerce sales will reach $53.10 billion in 2022, a 34.4% increase over 2021.

While the company would still trail Walmart, Amazon, and Costco in terms of grocery market share, its expanded footprint would give it a huge in-store retail media advantage. That said, given the weight of public opinion against the deal and vocal opposition from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, it seems increasingly unlikely the merger will take place.

There are signs that China’s economy is on the upswing, including companies ranging from Walmart to Ralph Lauren noting an uptick in demand and traffic from Chinese consumers. However, a return to the days of rapid growth is unlikely, particularly given Beijing is not engaging in any large-scale fiscal stimulus to jolt spending.

Average hourly earnings rose 4.6% year-over-year (YoY) in February, as companies ranging from Kroger and Walmart to Home Depot and Lowe’s boost hourly pay to make their jobs more appealing. Why it matters: The situation makes for a challenging environment for companies seeking to deliver a positive customer experience, which is critical to customer retention.

That’s why we’ve argued that more retailers need to join the likes of Walmart, Amazon, Macy’s, and Target in boosting wages. Zooming in: While it is true that many high-profile retailers have recently announced layoffs, even after those job cuts many of those companies will still employ far more people than they did before the pandemic.

By contrast, US retail sales rose 1.3% MoM in October, thanks in part to Amazon, Walmart, and others pushing high-profile promotions as they attempted to pull holiday demand earlier than ever, per the US Commerce Department. On an annualized basis, retail sales jumped 8.3%, outpacing the rate of inflation.

Nor will consumers escape unscathed: Higher labor costs will trickle down into more expensive Lyft rides and Instacart orders, and could also lead sellers on Amazon and Walmart to hike prices in response to increased fulfillment costs.

For example, 212.4 million visited a Walmart store in June, while only 125.3 visited one of the retailer’s online properties. The vision: It’s easy to imagine brands getting excited about delivering ads close to the point of purchase where roughly 85% of retail sales occur.

Walmart filed trademark patents for a clinical trial business on August 11. With its large footprint of stores, it’s suited to make clinical trials more diverse. Walgreens launched a clinical trial business in June with the aim to increase diverse communities’ access and retention in sponsor-led drug development research.

That stood in sharp contrast with Walmart, which like Target had warned investors that it was taking drastic steps to adapt to consumers’ shifting spending patterns, but beat analysts’ expectations. A speed bump: Target’s results were a clear dud, as they fell short of Wall Street’s expectations by a wide margin—even after the company lowered its guidance twice.

Both Walmart and Target have seen success in adding click and collect and curbside pickup features, with both retailers growing the former’s share of total ecommerce sales. But click-and-collect growth for non-grocery retailers was mixed, as shoppers opted for in-person visits over online orders. Nevertheless, we estimate US click-and-collect sales will grow by 19.4% this year.

Retailers saddled with excess inventory—including Macy’s and Walmart—have slashed prices to move stock. CPG brands and grocery stores are offering more discounts to prevent customers from trading down to cheaper brands or discount stores. Promotional activity in many food and beverage categories is close to where it was pre-pandemic, per IRI.

In the case of Sam’s Club and Walmart, it all started with electronics. Hiatt was part of the team at Walmart that turned its in-store TV screens into an ad opportunity. Moving from electronics into different departments allowed the company to get started with screens that were already showing brand-safe content in stores and build out from there. Approach measurement strategically.

Article: Walmart says high food prices are keeping customers from spending on discretionary categories. Article: Retail availability rate hit a 10-year low in Q2.

While Walmart is kind of guaranteeing its low prices, especially through its private label goods, but it's also focused on driving membership to Walmart Plus and it's trying to bundle together a whole suite of features and offers in there to make it worthwhile.