We’re nearly two weeks into 2025, and the year is already shaping up to be an interesting one for retail.
The space continues to whirl its way toward a great consolidation, where large corporations snap up smaller competition, leaving consumers with a handful of options for their day-to-day shopping.
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It’s not entirely bad for customers, though. Most of us tend to favor convenience and price over quality, especially for smaller or mundane purchases. Largely speaking, it’s no longer necessary to save up and buy something that might last you several decades. Goods are cheaper and easier to come by.
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This also leads to a lot more waste. The average home size, for example, has tripled over the last 50 years. Americans own far more than they used to; there are now, on average, approximately 300,000 items in every household.
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Those items have to come from somewhere. And in the U.S., a large majority of those goods tend to come from one of two retail giants: Walmart (WMT) or Amazon (AMZN) .
Walmart is the king of retail — it accounts for about 9% of U.S. retail sales overall, and just over a quarter of grocery sales. Amazon accounts for 37% of all online sales. Together, about half of all sales are made at just two retail giants.
A Walmart worker hangs clothing in a store.
Image source: Tim Boyle/Getty Images
Walmart has big plans for the future
As the world’s largest retailer, it might be understandable if Walmart set its sights on maintaining dominance and staying in its lane, simply doing what people expect of it.
But in today’s increasingly competitive market, maintaining the status quo isn’t enough to stay on top.
Walmart has set about proclaiming some lofty goals for the future, setting up new ways that it thinks will help keep it as the largest retailer — and beyond.
For one, it has promised to build about 150 stores by the end of the decade (2029), and remodel 650 more. This is part of a $9 billion project that will upgrade many of Walmart’s locations to make the shopping experience a more pleasant one.
These efforts represent millions of dollars in capital investment of labor, supplies and tax revenue, which benefit their respective communities. And they’ll help us reach and serve even more customers,” Walmart CEO John Furner wrote in 2024.
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This is all a part of Walmart’s “Store of the Future” concept, which includes upgrades like new tech, better layouts, “new paint, new signs and more shopping carts, creating a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.”
It’s also investing in talent.
Walmart says it will create “hundreds of jobs,” over the next five years.
“And those jobs come with amazing perks, like tuition-free college starting on day one, or flexible scheduling and competitive paid time off,” Furner added.
Walmart has lofty climate goals
Walmart isn’t just focused on its stores and people, though. The retailer has set some ambitious sustainability goals to demonstrate that it’s focused on being a good steward of the planet.
It has claimed it wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 35% by the end of 2025 and again by 65% by 2030. It has been measuring this benchmark against previous 2015 levels.
However, those goals have proven too lofty. Walmart issued an update saying it’s likely to miss those metrics, blaming things like energy policy and infrastructure.
“While we continue to work towards our aspirational goal of zero emissions by 2040, progress will not be linear; our trajectory and challenges related to energy policy, infrastructure, and the availability of cost-effective low-carbon technologies will likely delay achievement of our interim 2025 and 2030 targets,” Walmart said.
Walmart said that at the end of 2023, its emissions decreased by 19.3% compared to its 2015 levels, and its carbon intensity declined by 45%. Year-over-year emissions actually increased, though, up by 3.9% due to “business growth and other factors.”
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