“We’re bringing all the pieces together to be much more than a marketplace and investing in new ways for sellers to serve customers as we grow together,” Manish Joneja, senior vice president, Walmart Marketplace and Walmart Fulfillment Services, said in a Tuesday (Aug. 27) press release.

The platform’s new product categories include Premium Beauty at Walmart, which features custom storefronts and editorial content; Resold at Walmart, which includes pre-owned items like luxury fashion, electronics and collectibles from 1,700 sellers; and Collector Shop, which focuses on collectibles like action figures, dolls and trading cards.

Walmart Marketplace will also add a new omnichannel experience that will connect shoppers with local retailers through Walmart’s digital channels and offer direct pickup and delivery from sellers’ physical stores. This Walmart LocalFinds offering will launch this fall in Atlanta and Dallas before rolling out to other cities.

The company also introduced new solutions offered by Walmart Fulfillment Services (WFS). These include a Multichannel Solutions program that will launch Sept. 10 and let sellers use WFS to fulfill orders from any eCommerce site via Walmart’s supply chain; a Walmart Cross Border import service in which WFS will handle the transportation of full-container-load shipments from ports of origin in Asia to WFS facilities in the United States; and an expansion of the Walmart Preferred Carrier program that will let sellers ship a few items or an entire truckload through carriers vetted by Walmart.

“We know the importance of personalized, seamless omnichannel experiences, and Walmart continues to advance its digital and fulfillment capabilities, including the new categories and features we announced today, that enhance the overall customer and seller experience on Walmart.com,” Tom Ward, executive vice president and chief eCommerce officer, Walmart U.S., said in the release.

Walmart launched its third-party marketplace in 2009 to diversify its product offerings and compete with Amazon’s seller ecosystem, PYMNTS reported in September.

The company said in its Tuesday press release that Walmart Marketplace has achieved more than 30% sales growth in each of the past four quarters and that the number of sellers listing items on Walmart.com grew 20% in the last fiscal year.

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Ignacio Caride, who spent more than a decade with online retailer Mercado Libre before becoming CEO of Walmart Mexico — or Walmex — discussed his vision of the company Sunday (Aug. 25) in an interview with the Financial Times (FT).

“Walmex is changing, it’s not a retailer any more ... [or] it’s not only that,” he said. “Around that core business, which is very important, we are building a whole ecosystem.”

According to the report, Caride aims to create a seamless experience between physical and online shopping, while also improving Walmex’s ability to cross-sell offerings like financial services and healthcare. The goal is for the company to double annual revenue to around 1.8 trillion pesos (or about $93 billion) over the next nine years.

The FT noted that there’s a wealth of opportunity in the online shopping space, as Mexico — a middle-income nation with a younger population base — is one of the world’s fast-growing eCommerce markets.

However, much of the market share is held by Amazon and Mercado Libre. A report earlier this year by Mexico’s antitrust regulator Cofece found that the two companies control 85% of the country’s eCommerce space, and called the government to order Amazon and Mercado Libre to take “corrective measures” to ensure competition in the online shopping market.

In the meantime, the challenge for Caribe is to turn a retailer with outdated IT into something that can play in the same arena as its digital-native rivals, the FT report said.

“Our big outstanding debt in the digital world is the technology,” he said. “We’re such a big company with so many systems, we call them legacy systems because they were built for a retail-based mentality, and today we need to modernize that.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that 62% of shoppers in Mexico are seeking digital features that aren’t always available, leading merchants to try to fix this digital deficit.  

“The reason shoppers in Mexico want digital shopping features is because often they enable consumers to save money and improve their overall in-store experience,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this year.

“In other words — just like we found when studying consumer behavior in Brazil, the U.K., the U.S.  and elsewhere — these local shoppers also enjoy enhancing their brick-and-mortar shopping adventures with digital features: an approach to buying our research calls Click-and-Mortar shopping.”

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Health insurance companies have been among those potential buyers, but it is not clear if any talks are still ongoing, Reuters reported Tuesday (July 2), citing a paywalled article by Fortune.

The retailer aims to recoup some of the investment it made in the clinics, whether in a sale or another takeover arrangement, according to the report.

Last week, Walmart sold its virtual care subsidiary, MeMD, to healthcare technology startup Fabric, per the report.

When announcing that acquisition in a June 28 press release, Fabric said the move would expand its virtual care services to 30,000 employers and 5,000 members.

“The MeMD team built a leading virtual care offering, and we are excited to welcome them to Fabric,” Aniq Rahman, founder and CEO of Fabric, said in the release. “This acquisition aligns with our strategic vision to transform healthcare delivery through innovative technology and exceptional customer care.”

Walmart announced its decision to close all 51 Walmart Health centers across five states and Walmart Health Virtual Care on April 30, saying there was not a sustainable business model for those operations to continue.

“This is a difficult decision, and like others, the challenging reimbursement environment and escalating operating costs create a lack of profitability that make the care business unsustainable for us at this time,” the retailer said in a press release announcing the move.

Walmart added that it will continue to offer other health and wellness services through its 4,600 Pharmacies and 3,000 Vision Centers.

During a May 16 earnings call, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon addressed the scrapping of the retailer’s healthcare initiative, saying the decision was “necessary but difficult.”

“There were a number of aspects that were going well, and we really want to be a part of the solution to improving health care in this country,” McMillon said. “But the reality is that given reimbursement rates and cost to serve, we could no longer see a path to achieving an acceptable level of profitability. And we’re committed to being disciplined with our investments.”

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Speaking at the Bank of America London Investor Conference, Rainey said the current quarter, the second quarter, is “certainly” the retailer’s most challenging quarter from a comp perspective for the year, Seeking Alpha reported Tuesday.

“Not every quarter is going to be as good as the last quarter,” Rainey said, per the report.

Walmart reported that its first-quarter comp sales, excluding fuel, were up 3.9%, according to the report.

Walmart’s first-quarter earnings were better than expected, PYMNTS reported on May 16.

The retailer’s gains in comparable-store sales were not solely attributable to inflation, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said at the time during the company’s quarterly earnings call. Inflation contributed only 40 basis points to sales growth, with mid-single-digit deflation in general merchandise and low-single-digit inflation in food and consumables.

“We are focused on what we’re doing and how we earn business with customers and members,” McMillon said during the call. “We’ve been known for price forever, but we’re increasingly known for convenience. So, whether the environment is inflationary, or deflationary, whether customers have more money or less money, if we’re doing a good job on the items and prices and the service we provide, saving them money with pickup and delivery for example, we can continue to grow share.”

Walmart announced Monday (June 24) that it is following up its just-finished summer savings event with another one slated to commence July 8 and run through July 11.

The retailer’s upcoming savings event, “Walmart Deals,” will offer discounts on school-related goods and high-cost electronics.

Coming just weeks after its Walmart+ Week, which ended Sunday (June 23), the Walmart Deals event highlights the retailer’s responsiveness to the increasing trend among consumers to concentrate their purchases around seasonal sales. It also marks Walmart’s effort to compete with Amazon’s Prime Day to capture consumers’ increased demand for seasonal sales.

The draw of Walmart and similar stores lies in their ability, afforded by their scale, to offer lower prices on essential goods, according to PYMNTS Intelligence’s “New Reality Check: The Paycheck-to-Paycheck Report.”

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Walmart announced Monday (June 24) an upcoming savings event, “Walmart Deals,” slated to commence on July 8 and run through July 11, highlighting the retailer’s responsiveness to the increasing trend among consumers to concentrate their purchases around seasonal sales, particularly leading into the back-to-school season. There will be discounts on school-related goods, for example, as well as several discounts on high-cost electronics.

The event will be Walmart’s second summer savings occasion in short succession. Its Walmart+ Week, which offered seven days of savings to participants in the retailer’s paid membership program, ended Sunday (June 23). Walmart Deals, conversely, is open to everyone, although Walmart+ members get early access.

The announcement of the second event so soon after the close of the first could suggest that Walmart has seen a positive response to its just-ended initiative and is looking for ways to keep the momentum going as its rival, Amazon, gets ready for its Prime Day event, which is typically a blockbuster.

Amazon, for its part, is already looking to drum up enthusiasm for its event, releasing an array of how-to guides meant to get consumers focused on the event and teasing early deals. A TechRadar report Monday spotted a snippet from the company’s Google search results in the United Kingdom saying that the event will run July 16-17, but Amazon has not officially announced the dates.

Historically, Amazon has won big over Walmart when it comes to deals events. The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Summer Deal Days 2023: How Amazon Still Dominates” drew from a survey of more than 5,500 Amazon Prime members and Walmart shoppers, aiming to assess the performance of these sales events among their respective customer groups. The study revealed that Amazon Prime Day saw twice as many participants as Walmart+ Week last year, despite the former being a members-only event and the latter having been open to all.

Specifically, 40% of consumers made purchases during Amazon’s deals event, while half that share did so during Walmart’s, versus 36% and 11%, respectively, in 2022. As such, it seems that while Walmart saw much lower participation, it saw much greater growth by opening the event to all customers. This year, by having a members-only event followed by one open to the public, Walmart may hope to have its cake and eat it too regarding exclusivity, incentivizing new signups for its paid membership in the former and reaching a broader customer base in the latter.

Other merchants are joining the mix too, with DoorDash having brought back its seasonal members-only sales event Summer of DashPass and major electronics retailer Best Buy in the midst of its Member Deals Days.

Overall, consumers are increasingly concentrating their spending around seasonal sales moments, as has been noted by merchants ranging from Best Buy to Target-owned same-day delivery aggregator Shipt.

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Aimed at young adults, the No Boundaries brand has been refreshed by a Generation Z-focused design team, the retailer said in a Thursday (June 13) press release.

“Refreshing our private brand portfolio is critical to our fashion strategy as we evolve our assortment to resonate not only with our core customers, but the next generation of Walmart Shoppers,” Jen Jackson Brown, senior vice president of Walmart U.S. fashion brands, said in the release.

The design team hired by Walmart to refresh No Boundaries is the first such team that the retailer has dedicated to the brand, according to the release.

The line includes 130 size-inclusive pieces with style rooted in casual trends and weekend wear, the release said. Eighty percent of the items are priced under $15, and many are available for $5.

The refreshed No Boundaries collection will be introduced across social channels, including the immersive Walmart Discovered experience on Roblox, where users will be able to buy real-world outfits and unlock virtual twins, per the release.

“There’s a huge opportunity for Walmart to reach a Gen Z customer with a brand that has both incredible style and unbelievable prices,” Brown said in the release. “We have 145 million U.S. customers shopping with us in stores and online each week, and the new No Boundaries brand is designed and marketed with intention to reach this young adult audience by focusing on fit, quality, style and fabrics that resonate with them.”

It was reported in February 2023 that Walmart was pitching its private-label goods to consumers as its suppliers continued to raise prices. For example, the retailer’s store brands Great Value and Equate compete with packaged goods from giants like Procter and Gamble and Unilever.

In April, Walmart expanded its private-label offerings with the debut of “chef-inspired” food brand bettergoods. The launch represents the retailer’s largest private-brand food rollout in 20 years and is happening as several other retailers are also delving deeper into the world of private-label goods.

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“This is something we’re looking at over the next couple of years,” Walmart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs, Dan Bartlett, told Reuters last week in reference to the company’s marketplace Flipkart and payments platform PhonePe.

And while Flipkart has been around longer, Walmart could tackle an initial public offering (IPO) for PhonePe first, the executive added, speaking on the sidelines of the company’s shareholders meeting.

PhonePe, Bartlett said, is “one of the largest payment platforms” in India, pointing to the company’s connection to India’s instant money transfer system, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which lets users send money across multiple banks without disclosing account details.

“There’s a lot of processes that have to be put in place before we go public,” Bartlett said, in reference to PhonePe. “Obviously the question about the Indian exchange versus others” is “under consideration” for the future IPO, he added.

Last year, Walmart’s chief financial officer told an investor conference audience that the two companies could become $100 billion businesses.

Meanwhile, Google announced last month that it plans to invest in Flipkart, becoming a minority investor in the company.

“Google’s proposed investment and its cloud collaboration will help Flipkart expand its business and advance the modernization of its digital infrastructure to serve customers across the country,” Flipkart said in a news release.

The Flipkart marketplace includes upwards of 500 million registered users, 1.4 million sellers and 150 million products across 80 categories, the release said.

Walmart last year paid $1.4 billion for a larger stake in the Indian eCommerce platform, making that purchase from the investment management group Tiger Global. An investor letter at the time pegged Flipkart’s value at $35 billion.

Last week saw a report that PhonePe was increasing its dominance of UPI as another local payments firm, Paytm, continued to slip amid regulatory troubles.

Companies such Paytm and PhonePe are all competing for consumer attention in a country that has been on a “digital payments journey” for the last 15 years, as PYMNTS wrote late last year.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that digital wallets are now the preferred payment method for more than half of retail purchases in India, with 8 out of 10 digital wallet users opting for UPI.

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The event will feature seven days of offers and savings available to Walmart+ members, the retailer said in a Thursday (May 30) press release.

“Additionally, we’re introducing our first-ever mystery offer, set to be revealed on June 20,” Venessa Yates, general manager and senior vice president of Walmart+, said in the release. “While I can’t divulge the details just yet, I promise it will be worth watching out for.”

The offers that have been announced include discounts on fuel; 20% back in Walmart Cash on flights, hotels, car rentals and other activities; complimentary Express Delivery; and three free months of Walmart+ InHome. There will also be exclusive access to items that will be revealed later.

“As you can see, we’re pulling out all the stops this year to transform Walmart+ Week into a unique experience,” Yates said in the release. 

The retailer has moved up the event on the calendar to be held before Amazon’s Prime Day, Seeking Alpha reported Thursday.

Amazon said May 1 that Prime Day will be held in July but that the exact dates for this year’s event have not yet been announced.

Last year, Prime Day and Walmart+ Week took place on overlapping days in mid-July.

PYMNTS Intelligence found that participation in Prime Day grew to a larger extent than Walmart+ Week, even though Walmart opened Walmart+ Week to the general public in 2023. While 40% of consumers made purchases on Amazon Prime Day, just 20% did so during Walmart+ Week.

Even so, Walmart+ Week shoppers spent almost twice as much money as Amazon Prime subscribers, largely owing to the grocery purchases they made. More than half bought groceries during the Walmart+ Week event — two times more than Amazon Prime shoppers who did the same.

PYMNTS also found that customers who participated in the two sales events in 2023 were primarily motivated by the bargains promised by both retailers.

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The internal system failure resulted in widespread mispricing, with some items being sold at incorrect lower prices and others at higher prices, Bloomberg reported Wednesday (May 29).

While Walmart has taken steps to address the problem and reimburse affected customers, concerns about consumer protection laws and potential legal and regulatory consequences for the company have arisen, according to the report.

When the incident began on March 19, internal warnings alerted Walmart about pricing discrepancies occurring at self-checkout stands in its stores, the report said. A system failure prevented price data from flowing to the self-checkout stands, leading to widespread mispricing.

While Walmart acknowledged the breakdown and overcharging of customers, specific details such as the number of affected individuals, the total amount overcharged and the duration of the problem were not disclosed, per the report.

Walmart spokesperson Mischa Dunton told Bloomberg that the technical issue was resolved, and more than 80% of customers who were overcharged have been reimbursed.

However, legal experts said that despite the reimbursement efforts, the pricing errors likely violate state and federal consumer protection laws, according to the report.

Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah, told Bloomberg that even a small mistake of this magnitude could result in millions of dollars in illegal overcharges.

State and federal authorities will likely consider two factors when deciding whether to take action against Walmart, Bill Kovacic, a professor at George Washington University Law School, told Bloomberg.

Firstly, they will assess whether the company made a complete and good-faith effort to reimburse affected customers and notify them of the issue. Secondly, they will expect Walmart to conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the problem and implement measures to prevent its recurrence, Kovacic said, per the report.

The pricing issue was not the only technological problem Walmart faced in recent months, according to the report. The company experienced cash register and website outages in February, as well as disruptions to photo and vision prescription orders in March.

Walmart described these incidents as “disparate events” and “anomalies,” emphasizing the inherent risks associated with innovation and technology integration, per the report.

It was reported in March that the retailer was scaling back self-checkout, limiting it to subscribers or making decisions about use of the technology on a store-by-store basis.

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The retail giant is in the midst of opening or converting more than 150 stores in the next five years, including two new Neighborhood Markets in the Dune Lakes area of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood, Walmart announced Tuesday (May 21).

“The stores aren’t just new or remodeled. They’re also bigger,” Kyle Kinnard, Walmart’s senior vice president for Neighborhood Markets, wrote on the company blog.

“With 57,000 square feet of sales floor and pickup and delivery space, the Dune Lakes and Vine City stores will have a footprint that’s about 17,000 square feet larger than the average Neighborhood Market. The expanded space will allow us to sharpen our focus on value, speed and convenience,” Kinnard added.

According to the announcement, this larger layout will let Walmart offer a wider assortment of products, particularly in its fresh food offerings.

“We’ve also allotted more space for pickup and delivery orders in these new stores,” Kinnard said. “The larger space includes dedicated room for refrigerated goods, so associates can keep orders moving at an even faster pace.”

That’s in keeping with remarks CEO Doug McMillon made last week when Walmart reported its quarterly earnings. “We are focused on what we’re doing and how we earn business with customers and members,” McMillon said.

“We’ve been known for price forever, but we’re increasingly known for convenience. So whether the environment is inflationary, or deflationary, whether customers have more money or less money, if we’re doing a good job on the items and prices and the service we provide, saving them money with pickup and delivery for example, we can continue to grow share,” McMillon added.

Also on the call, the company discussed how its Click-and-Mortar technologies are contributing to growth, with Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey pointing to “digitally enabled solutions such as Scan & Go and curbside pickup” as drivers of improved performance in the quarter.

Meanwhile, former Walmart U.S. CEO Bill Simon warned last week that the company’s recent embrace by more affluent shoppers might be short-lived.

Speaking on CNBC’s Fast Money, Simon said that when the economic situation improves, consumers will go back to retailers that provide a premium experience.

“As the economic challenges abate … service will become more important than convenience and price. And, we’ll see a shift back of some of the consumers,” Simon said.

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