Instead of its traditional focus on
large format stores and price rollbacks, the retail giant will be
working hard to promote online sales while opening smaller brick and
mortar stores.
The company is planning on adding 26
to 30 million square feet of retail space worldwide during this time,
which is a reduction from the original projection of between 32 and
34 million square feet. Walmart plans to open nearly 240 of the new,
smaller format stores by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, with
another 20 of the smaller store openings carrying over into 2016.
During this time, the company plans to spend between $11.6 billion
and $12.9 billion carrying out the updated strategy, and these
expenditures also represent a slight decrease from the company’s
original projections.
A great deal of Walmart’s spending
into the 2016 fiscal year will be focused on increasing its amount of
e-commerce investments in a bid to compete more strongly with
companies like Amazon. As the global marketplace continues to evolve
and more and more consumers look to the convenience of online
shopping, Walmart continues to seek out new, more relevant ways to
serve its existing customers and to offer services that attract new
customers. While the company continues to emphasize their core values
of providing a wide array of goods, maintaining excellent customer
service and keeping prices low, they want to be able to give their
customers the choices they want in ways that are effective and
convenient for today’s consumer.
One current area of focus for
Walmart is their Neighborhood Market stores, formerly called Walmart
Express stores. These shops are much smaller than traditional
Walmart Supercenters and are designed for the customer who needs a
quick trip to purchase a last-minute item, pick up a forgotten dinner
ingredient, or fill a prescription. Walmart’s research has
indicated that these smaller format Neighborhood Markets truly appeal
to today’s busy customer, who often doesn’t have time to stock up
on groceries all at once or to wait in a long supermarket line. The
company plans to open between 200 and 220 Neighborhood Markets by the
middle of the 2016 fiscal year as part of its new retail strategy.
Additionally, Walmart is also
slowing its rate of growth for its Sam’s Club locations. Walmart
will only open between nine and 12 Sam’s Club locations in the next
fiscal year, opting to remodel between 50 and 60 of its existing
clubs to more accurately reflect and cater to today’s consumer.
