It can be difficult to identify the struggles that retail giants face, however, the data from large-scale, member only, annual sales events give great insight into the health of these retailers. In a year like 2022 where things are all over the place, when analyzing data from the global retail market, nothing should be a surprise.
New data shines light on the overall performance of the membership-only sales even that was held by Walmart. After an analysis of the data, we can compare the differences between Amazon’s “Amazon Prime Day” and Walmart + Weekend. After Walmart finished their first ever annual event, there are some mixed results.
Understanding the Results for Walmart + Weekend
Walmart turns out to be the only organization with ample resources and a massive size to compete with the warehouse-to-door e-commerce pipeline of Amazon. However, Walmart is now gradually catching up with Amazon, who has dominated the e-commerce retail space for more than two decades.
Amazon organized its first-ever Amazon Prime Day in July 2015, and in June 2022, Walmart also organized its version of an annual sales event. It has been a turbulent time for Walmart in the past few months -especially after they minimized their overall projected earnings for the entire year as inventory issues and inflationary costs have been eating away their bottom line.
For the fiscal year 2023, Walmart has estimations of its earnings falling by around one percent. Before these reports, they had expected an earnings increase of around 5 to 6 percent.
Reasons for the Fall of Earnings
Doug McMillon -CEO of Walmart, explains that the ongoing inflation levels across the United States of America -especially in sectors like fuel and food, have created drastic changes on overall margins, along with the total projected operating costs expected by the retail giant.
On the other hand, Amazon continues dealing with profitability issues of its own. The company has cautiously stated that the combined overall costs with respect to supply chain disruptions, hiring, and effective warehouse management are around a whopping $4 billion in the ongoing fiscal quarter.
The prediction is made following the surprise-filled first quarter loss of around $3.8 billion by Amazon and the slowest year-on-year revenue-based growth in over a decade.
Therefore, it most likely that both organizations are thoroughly scrutinizing the results of Walmart + Weekend quite closely. An in-depth analysis by Numerator -a leading market research data company, has shed some light on the results
Walmart Weekend Suffering from Poor Awareness
Only a small portion of shoppers from Walmart.com were even aware of the annual sales event which took place from 2nd June through 5th June.
Based on data obtained by observing purchase behavior of the end consumers, along with analyzing surveys of shoppers of Walmart + Weekend for verified buyers, Numerator estimates that only 33 percent of online shoppers of Walmart were aware of the annual sales event.
The number is miniscule when compared with 94 percent of Amazon buyers who were aware of the Amazon Prime Day in 2021.
Even with this disadvantage, the average spend for Walmart + Weekend on a per order basis was $69.75. This average turns out to be more than the subsequent average for Walmart.com and its average order size of $64.99. In 2021, the average order size for Amazon Prime Day was $54.17.
Shoppers of Walmart + Weekend have an average of around 3 or fewer orders for every household (1.2 orders), in comparison to that of Amazon Prime Day shoppers during last year, which was 2.9 per household. Walmart + Weekend buyers also made fewer average numbers of orders, which over a 4-day weighted average was 1.6 orders.
Most shoppers made use of the sale to shop for groceries because at the moment inflation is expected to remain stagnant throughout the remainder of the year. Additionally, 7% of shoppers purchased health and beauty products, and around 65% purchased household products. Consumers who spent on home, garden, & electronics was around 5-6%. These spend averages were significantly low at the time of Walmart + Weekend.
Is Walmart Capable of Taking on Prime?
Launched during September 2020, Walmart + Weekend had around 32 million subscribers after just a period of one year. Amazon continues having the leading head start as they project, they have 152 million prime subscribers as of 2022. Still, after considering how long Amazon Prime has been around, Walmart indeed had a great start -particularly for how little time Walmart + has been promoting and advertising the subscription and annual sale.
However, subscriptions for Prime continue to grow every year. Therefore, if Walmart is aiming to compete with Amazon, they have some serious work to do. Recently, Walmart made news when it went ahead with hiring ex-PayPal CFO or Chief Financial Officer -John Rainey. Rainey is esteemed for his strength in the field of digital marketing. This move is expected to significantly help Walmart as the retail giant continues building out its wide range of services.
An Insight into Walmart +
The concept of Walmart + was unveiled in 2020 and it has rapidly become the second-largest membership program in the retail industry, following Amazon Prime. The members of Walmart + are known to spend around 44 percent more annually at Walmart than the average shopper of Walmart -especially in baby and grocery sectors. While Amazon Prime is still the giant who has the most membership subscriptions, Walmart’s global footprint has helped them to capitalize on gaining market share in the space and will continue to compete in the years to come.