General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20269 min read

Walmart

Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates discount department stores, supercenters, and warehouse clubs, and is the largest private employer in the United States.¹^•² In fiscal 2026 it recorded total revenues of $713.2 billion, served approximately 280 million customers each week through more than 10,000 stores in 18 countries and its eCommerce sites, and employed roughly 2.1 million associates as of fiscal 2024.¹^•³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Revenue	$713.2 billion in fiscal 2026, up from $681.0 billion (FY2025) and $648.1 billion (FY2024)¹
Footprint	4,611 US stores plus 5,743 international stores in 18 countries; ~280 million weekly customers³
Workforce	~2.1 million associates worldwide; average US hourly wage near $18⁴^•⁵
Grocery	Grocery is about 60% of Walmart U.S. sales; roughly 20% of all US grocery sales flow through Walmart⁶^•⁷
E-commerce	$150.4 billion in the latest fiscal year, 21.3% of net sales, up from 17.9% a year earlier⁸
Segment margins (FY24)	Walmart U.S. $22 billion operating profit (5% margin), International $5 billion (4%), Sam's Club $2 billion (3%)⁹
Price position	Prices often 10–25% below competitors in economic studies; lowest grocery prices among five retailers in a UBS survey¹⁰^•⁷

How the everyday-low-price model works

Walmart's pricing philosophy is everyday low prices (EDLP): items are priced low every day so customers trust that prices will not change under frequent promotional activity. It is paired with everyday low cost (EDLC), the commitment to control expenses so that cost savings pass to customers.³ The model rests on scale and logistics rather than promotions. Walmart operates more than 200 distribution centers, each over 1 million square feet, each supporting 90 to 100 stores and turning over inventory every 24 hours, backed by a fleet of over 80,000 trailers and 11,000 drivers.¹⁰ It was among the first retailers to connect all stores and distribution centers to a computer network, implement bar codes, and build data-sharing systems with suppliers.¹⁰

Low advertising intensity is part of the cost structure. Wal-Mart's advertising costs historically ran about one-third those of other discount chains; while competitors ran 50 to 100 advertising circulars per year, Wal-Mart ran only 12 promotions a year.¹¹ The measured price effect is real but modest per store: an analysis of 10 consumer goods in 165 US cities from 1982 to 2002 found Wal-Mart entry lowered prices by roughly 1.5 to 3% in the short run and about four times as much in the long run.¹² Broader syntheses put Walmart's prices at 10 to 25% below competitors on average, and Hausman and Leibtag (2007) found food prices at Walmart Supercenters 15 to 25% lower than competitors.¹⁰^•¹³

History: from Ben Franklin to global giant

Wal-Mart grew from rural discount stores into the country's dominant retailer, and in due course became the first retailer in history to report after-tax profits of $1 billion, with 1,402 stores and 272,000 employees in 26 states, surpassing Kmart as the most profitable retailer in America.¹⁴ In the early 2000s it reached grocery sales of $56 billion, a 16 percent market share, making it the largest food retailer in the United States.¹⁴ Annual revenue passed $600 billion in fiscal 2023 and rose to $648 billion in fiscal 2024.¹⁵

By the numbers

Walmart reports three segments. In fiscal 2026, Walmart U.S. had net sales of $483.0 billion, 68% of consolidated net sales, up from $462.4 billion in fiscal 2025 and $441.8 billion in fiscal 2024; Walmart International had $130.4 billion (19%), up from $121.9 billion.³^•⁹ Within Walmart U.S., fiscal 2024 net sales included grocery $204.5 billion, general merchandise $81.3 billion, health and wellness $45.6 billion, and other categories $7.5 billion.⁶

Margins are thin by design. In fiscal 2024 Walmart U.S. generated $22 billion in operating profit on a 5% margin, Walmart International $5 billion at 4%, and Sam's Club $2 billion at 3%.⁹ The low-margin, high-turnover model is what makes EDLP sustainable: profit comes from volume and inventory velocity rather than markup.

How it compares with Target, Costco, Amazon, and dollar stores

On grocery prices, a UBS study comparing 36 products across five retailers found Walmart had the lowest prices on 22 of the items; Target's groceries were 10% more expensive than Walmart's, Kroger's 11%, Amazon's 20%, and Safeway/Albertsons' 23%.⁷ On overall prices, however, the annual Price Wars survey found Amazon the lowest-priced retailer for the eighth consecutive year in 2024, with a 14% average price advantage over competitors, down from 16% the prior year; Target's prices were 13% higher than Amazon's.¹⁶

On e-commerce scale, Walmart's online business generated $100.1 billion in 2024, just 22% of Amazon's $447.5 billion in net revenue that year.¹⁵ On assortment, the grocery gap with Target is wide: a 2020 industry ranking put Target's food sales at $33.7 billion, about 8% of Walmart's.¹³

Grocery: how Walmart became America's largest grocer

Grocery is about 60% of Walmart U.S. sales, and roughly 20% of all US grocery sales flow through Walmart, giving it, in the words of UBS analyst Michael Lasser, unmatched scale in the category.⁶^•⁷ That position reflects a structural shift in where Americans buy food. USDA estimates that between 1997 and 2020 the dollar share of grocery stores fell from 71% to 60%, while warehouse clubs and supercenters rose from 6% to 21%; the traditional-grocery dollar share fell from 90% in 1988 to 44% in 2018.¹³ Walmart's own grocery share has grown with that shift, from 16% when it first became the largest US food retailer in the early 2000s to about 20% today.¹⁴^•⁷

Labor, suppliers, and the Walmart effect

Wages. Entry wages for Walmart retail workers range between $14 and $19 per hour, against a national median for retail sales workers just above $16 per hour as of May 2023; the company reports its average US hourly wage has grown to nearly $18, and its FY25 letter reported that its highest-performing store managers earned more than $500,000.¹⁰^•⁵

Local employment effects are contested. Neumark and colleagues, using an instrumental-variables approach based on store openings spreading from Arkansas, found a Wal-Mart store opening reduces county-level retail employment by about 150 workers, implying each Wal-Mart worker replaces approximately 1.4 retail workers, and reduces county retail earnings by about $1.2 million, or 1.3%.¹⁷ Basker, in a peer-reviewed study, found the opposite sign: Wal-Mart entry increases retail employment by 100 jobs in the year of entry, half the gain disappears over five years, and a long-run net gain of 50 jobs remains, with wholesale employment down about 20 jobs as Wal-Mart vertically integrates.¹⁸ A separate county-level study found a new Wal-Mart reduces average retail earnings by 0.5 to 0.9 percent, with changes in skill composition explaining only a small part of the reduction.¹⁹ A 2024 synthesis concludes that most academic research finds modest increases in retail employment after entry.¹⁰ A peer-reviewed review reaches a middle position: evidence for Walmart's deleterious impacts on small businesses is limited, and there is no consensus on local employment effects, though most studies point to a modest increase in retail employment.¹³

Labor conflict and supply chain. In 2004 about 70,000 unionized Southern California supermarket workers struck for four months over benefits reductions that stores said were needed to compete with Wal-Mart's plan to open 40 Supercenters there; the same era saw a federal judge allow a gender discrimination class action on behalf of 1.6 million current and former female employees, the largest discrimination case in US history at the time.¹⁴ Sociological scholarship has examined Walmart across four themes: its business model and organizational structure, labor relations in its own stores and its global supply chain, community mobilizations against it, and its role in buyer-driven commodity chains.²⁰ In China, factories supplying Walmart were reported to have tough working conditions, including long hours and aggressive anti-union efforts, staffed largely by migrant workers from rural villages.²¹

Recent developments

E-commerce has become the growth engine. Walmart's e-commerce sales grew 24% in the latest fiscal year, from about $121 billion to $150.4 billion, reaching 21.3% of total net sales, up from 17.9% a year earlier.⁸ In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, Walmart U.S. eCommerce grew 24%, marketplace grew 52%, and advertising was up 38%; the marketplace expanded into Mexico and Canada, Walmart+ launched in Canada, and the company acquired Vibe to bolster advertising alongside Walmart Connect and VIZIO.²²

Delivery speed and automation. Fast delivery in the US grew 48% in that quarter, with baskets often delivered in under 30 minutes, and fee-based fast deliveries reached an all-time high of 37% of store-fulfilled deliveries.²² The company said it planned to deliver to 95 percent of the US population in under three hours, using supply-chain automation including AI and automated storage and retrieval systems.⁵ 3,100 US stores are now served with some level of automated freight, and over 50% of eCommerce fulfillment volume is processed through automated facilities.²² Walmart+ membership includes unlimited free shipping with no order minimum, fuel discounts, and mobile Scan & Go, and substantially all Walmart U.S. stores provide same-day pickup and delivery.³

International mix. Walmart International's eCommerce mix reached 30%, with growth of 19% led by China, India, and Canada, and Sam's Club U.S. launched one-hour delivery in April 2026.²² International operations are wholly owned in Canada, Chile, China, and Africa and majority owned in India and Mexico, with eCommerce properties including walmart.com.mx, walmart.ca, flipkart.com, PhonePe, and samclub.cn.³ In China, Walmart stores unionized in 2006, though the union has significant management involvement; the company has a $1.2 billion supply-chain infrastructure investment in China through 2029 and nearly 280 stores there.²¹

Prices and tariffs. In August 2026 Walmart announced price rollbacks on 11,000 products, fueled in part by $2.9 billion in tariff refunds, a one-time boon also deployed by rivals including Target; the announcement came alongside a rare comparable-sales miss and a 9% share slide.²³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Economics and business › Business and work › Retail trade and general-merchandise stores › Department and discount stores

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 10, 2026; Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 10, 2026

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