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Thanks to its growing retail media business, Walmart keeps its top spot on our 鈥淯nofficial Most interesting Retailers List鈥� for April 2024. Meanwhile, newcomer Home Depot and returning member TikTok Shop make the list for equipping advertisers with more data.

Several Fortune 500 organizations, including Meta, Walmart, McDonald鈥檚, and Target, have announced reductions or eliminations of some DEI programs, per Business Insider. How banks have responded: Despite scrutiny, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs stated at Davos that they鈥檙e committed to maintaining DEI initiatives, per MSNBC.

The context: The Walmart-owned warehouse club has taken several steps to streamline its shopping experience and tap into consumers鈥� growing focus on value and willingness to trade down to private-label products. To drive adoption of its Scan & Go service鈥攚hich roughly 1 in 3 shoppers use to skip checkout lines鈥攖he retailer offered first-time users a $10 reward.

Sales growth for cosmetics and beauty will increase at more than twice the rate online than through physical retail channels this year, according to our February 2024 forecast. While ecommerce is stealing market share, its sales only tell a portion of the buying story. Physical stores are still key to discovering beauty products and brands, finding the right shades, and testing formulations鈥攁nd Walmart is making use of its omnichannel footprint to take advantage. Here鈥檚 how.

The non-Amazon portion of the market will be divided up mainly among Walmart Connect, Loblaw Advance, Best Buy, and Canadian Tire Triangle. Source. Mars United Commerce.

We鈥檝e never broken out Walmart retail clinic patients, but the company said earlier this year it鈥檚 getting out of the health clinic business entirely. What鈥檚 next? Expect to see retail clinic operators that don鈥檛 intend to completely exit the market adopt new strategies for getting patients to their locations.

The finding: Despite dramatic anti-theft measures put in place by retailers like Walmart and Walgreens, few have found a silver bullet鈥攁nd many have instead faced unintended consequences. Theft prevention measures are irritating. Nearly 4 in 5 (78%) of consumers say it鈥檚 annoying when products are locked up or secured in cases, per a recent Zebra survey.

Amazon is not as competitive in digital grocery, but Walmart commands nearly 30% of sales. More than a quarter of digital grocery sales dollars come from third-party delivery companies鈥� apps and websites. Challenge 2: Retailers must meet customer expectations around price, selection, and convenience. Retailers need to manage operational costs without raising prices for customers.

Toy sales will gain steam as value-focused consumers find deals throughout the holiday season, which began in early October when retail giants including Amazon, Target, and Walmart launched major sales. Click here to view our full forecast for US holiday retail ecommerce sales growth, by product category.

Those conditions have been a boon to retailers like Walmart and off-price merchants like TJ Maxx and Nordstrom Rack. But that sharp focus on value has posed a significant challenge to niche retailers like Party City and The Container Store, which both filed for bankruptcy protection in the days leading up to Christmas.

Semrush data cited by Reuters found that Temu and Shein were buying Google ad space on search terms like 鈥淲补濒尘补谤迟 Black Friday,鈥� 鈥淏ed Bath Beyond,鈥� 鈥淲补濒尘补谤迟 Clothes,鈥� and other key terms with major competing brands in hopes of targeting consumers during the Cyber Five. CPCs on 鈥淲补濒尘补谤迟 Clothes鈥� increased 16 times from August 2022 to August 2024.

But the channel鈥檚 growth鈥攁s well as its dominant share of retail media spending鈥攃an largely be attributed to Amazon and Walmart, the runaway leaders in terms of on-site scale. That advantage will keep Amazon and Walmart the first- and second-largest players in the retail media ecosystem for the foreseeable future.

Walmart has also ventured into shoppable entertainment over the past few years, including with the debut of its first shoppable feature film, 鈥淛ingle Bell Love,鈥� on the Roku Channel last holiday season and a shoppable rom-com 鈥淎dd to Heart鈥� in 2023.

The Mexican ecommerce landscape: TikTok Shop is entering a fast-growing market in which we expect four key players鈥擬ercado Libre, Amazon, Walmart, and Liverpool鈥攖o account for nearly half (49.1%) of online sales this year. The context: ByteDance appears to be taking steps to diversify its TikTok Shop portfolio as the US government edges closer to potentially banning TikTok.

Why it matters: Retailers like CVS, Target, and Walmart are locking up products to prevent theft鈥攁t the expense of the customer experience. Shoppers wait an average of 7.7 minutes for items to be unlocked, according to data from RDSolutions reported by Retail Brew. Mass retailers have the highest wait time (8.6 minutes) and drug stores have the lowest (6.9 minutes).

Synchrony just renewed its long-standing partnership with Sam鈥檚 Club, which could lead to the issuer reigniting its card relationship with Walmart. And it鈥檚 reportedly in talks to take over the Apple Card from Goldman Sachs. This would bring in an influx of new volume for Synchrony鈥攁lthough the card program鈥檚 delinquency and default issues could hurt Synchrony鈥檚 metrics.

Mounting pressure will squeeze the long tail of retail media networks: Amazon and Walmart combined will gobble up more than 84% of all retail media ad spending in 2025, leaving a rather narrow slice of the market for all other players.

Walmart and Carvana will mark somewhat stronger sales growth for all three years, and only Walmart has sufficient scale to gain notable ecommerce market share: It will grow by 1 percentage point to reach 9.2% in 2026. In 2025, Walmart will become the only US retailer that鈥檚 not Amazon to surpass $100 billion in annual online sales.

Amazon is ditching Just Walk Out in favor of Dash Carts. Not only will the move satisfy customers鈥� desire for familiar technology, but it鈥檚 also creating more ad inventory. Walmart Connect also emphasized its in-store retail media potential last week, with a focus on expanding familiar strategies like sampling and TV screens. This back-to-basics approach might spark more in-store retail media ad spend.

Walmart enhanced its product development by collaborating with platform creators on back-to-school merchandise. Forever 21 used virtual item performance data to guide physical product development decisions. Our take: For brands struggling to connect with younger demographics through traditional channels, Roblox's immersive experiences represent the next evolution in digital engagement.

Amazon and Walmart combined will gobble up more than 84% of all retail media ad spending in 2025, representing a pervasive and unyielding dominance within the channel. The share of ad spending allocated to all other RMNs increased by less than 1 percentage point between 2019 and 2024.

The company has tried to do this with limited success for years, but has been unable to match the scale of grocery giants like Walmart. But with small-format grocery stores like Amazon Grocery, which was launched in October 2024 in Chicago, Amazon will be able to harness its technology more effectively. The key factor here is its proximity to Whole Foods, which doesn鈥檛 offer many national brands.

Retail media鈥檚 positive hype is real. We expect it will disrupt the digital advertising landscape worldwide. In Canada, a handful of players鈥攍ed by Amazon, Walmart, and Loblaw鈥攈ave turned it into the fastest-growing ad segment in the country, and at scale.

Like Walmart, Amazon has technological savvy and deep payments expertise鈥攑lus deep pockets to finance the endeavor. It also already offers an ACH-based pay by bank option, making a real-time solution the next logical step. Walmart will pilot a pay by bank cash-back and discount rewards program for customers.