It’s no secret that retail has changed quite a bit since your parents — or even grandparents — went shopping a few decades ago.
In the mid-20th century, for example, most shops were highly specialized and only carried products in a handful of categories. Customers typically went to the butcher for their meat and to the fresh market for their produce. There might have only been a handful of shops around town where you could buy clothing, and if you wore a hole through your shoes, you had to visit a specialist to have it repaired.
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A couple of decades later, around the 1980s, malls came in vogue. Suddenly, you could procure a variety of goods for less money and effort. Those old shoes you needed to fix were suddenly replaceable with a shiny new pair. And while you were at the mall, you could pick up a new pair of jeans, a soft pretzel — and maybe even a sofa.
On a macro level, retail has largely condensed over the years. Customers tend to favor convenience and price over quality. Largely speaking, it’s no longer necessary to save up and buy something that might last you 35 years. Goods are cheaper and easier to come by. And many of them often come from a handful of giant retail corporations.
An increasing number of Walmart customers are drawn to the store for its wide selection of produce.
Image source: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Trends continue to change how we shop
Now, of course, it’s no longer in vogue — or even the most convenient — to shop at a large mall for what you need. A trip to the mall typically involves getting dressed, getting into your car, vying for a parking spot, and going in-person to multiple stores to buy your goods.
Instead, many of us prefer to shop online from the comfort of our homes. If we do go in person, it’s likely to one of a handful of large retailers that sell everything we need under one roof, like Walmart (WMT) or Target (TGT) .
This trend was largely accelerated by COVD-19, which put many small, speciality retailers out of business and allowed the biggest players to snap up potential competitors before they became actual competitors.
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One shopping trip many of us continue to carry out in person is the regular grocery run. Try as they might to crack the online code, behemoths like Amazon (AMZN) just haven’t been able to capture as much market share as they’d like. The bottom line is that many of us still prefer to pick out our own produce and packaged goods.
Walmart could snap up more market share
That’s good news for the large corporations that are already well established in brick and mortar. Both Target and Walmart have robust grocery departments that continue to grow thanks to their proximity to millions of customers and availability of trusted brand names.
Walmart has its sights particularly set on grocery for the year ahead. In 2024, the retail giant announced it would roll back the prices of many food items to pre-inflation levels. This came in part as other giants like Amazon began to nip at its heels, though Walmart remains the number one grocer in America.
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“We’ve got a very high-quality produce offering for people, and it invites them in,” Walmart CFO John David Rainey said in an interview in early January. “It’s a much broader assortment than what we’ve had historically.”
Walmart has been vocal about its efforts to make the shopping experience in its stores more pleasant. It has spent $9 billion to renovate and upgrade many of its stores, and in 2024 it announced it would open 150 new stores — either renovated existing locations or brand new stores — over the next five years. Grocery is one of the largest benefactors of such improvements.
Walmart is also increasing its private label offerings, making many options more gourmet or health-conscious to appeal to more consumers.
“It’s much broader and appeals to a lot more customers and members,” Rainey said, adding “the quality is just much different than what you’ve seen historically.”
Walmart’s ambitions to improve and grow its grocery selections come at a very welcome time. Groceries are only getting more expensive, so more consumers are choosing to shop at price-conscious retailers with reliable quality.
Rainey added that one third of Walmart customers are choosing to pay more for expedited grocery delivery, hinting that this offering is scaling quickly, too.
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