WHY DIDN’T WALMART’S REVENUES CLIMB…?
Last week I noted that for the first time in decades, Walmart’s revenue failed to keep the Bentonvile Behemoth at the top of the retail food chain. Analysts are spinning their own take on the event and Daniel Jennings, opining in Why Aren’t Low Prices Helping Wal-Mart’s Revenues? for Seeking Alpha offers this long list:
Losses overseas, particularly in Brazil… The failure of Wal-Mart Express… Store closings… Efforts to compete with Amazon… Runaway growth. Despite the store closings, Wal-Mart is still planning to open 135 stores in the US over the next year including 15 new supercenters and 85 Neighborhood Markets… The growth of online retailers, especially Amazon which is now effectively undercutting both Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club on the prices of many items… Experiments in delivery and click and pull designed to compete with Amazon… Raising the wages of 1.2 million US associates to $13.88 an hour… The increasing ability of a wide variety of competitors including companies as diverse as Kroger, Aldi, Dollar General, Costco and Amazon to match and in some cases undercut Wal-Mart’s prices… Wal-Mart’s weak brand and lousy reputation with customers create a psychological barrier that keeps a lot of shoppers away…
The list is a bit of the scattergun approach, but perhaps it takes a lot of negatives to push the king off the hill?