Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) has 4,616 stores in the United States. Walmart stores are notable because of their “sameness.” The aisles are wide and well-lit. The ceilings are tall. The items available from store to store are similar, if not identical. Checkouts are self-serve or done by cashiers. Supercenters cover 180,000 square feet and employ 300 people. (These are the biggest grocery store chains in North America.)
Walmart plans to reconfigure how its customers have shopped for years.
The company will spend $500 million to “re-grand” open many of its locations. This initial move will cover 117 Walmart stores in 30 states. If Walmart continues the process, the cost will be well into the billions of dollars. It can afford that.
What Will Change
Walmart management says the changes will better the shopping experience and improve the lives of “associates,” which is its name for its employees, many of whom are among the lowest-paid workers at a large American company. They would probably prefer raises.
What do shoppers get? Management says that the number of shopping carts will rise. Pharmacy service will be improved. The “vision centers” will have more eyeglasses. New displays will allow customers to interact with merchandise. It will be easier to open large boxes to see what is inside. Walmart stores will have larger areas for pickup and delivery. To top this off, “All the while, you might feel something else: more room. We’ve laid out our reopened stores to feature more space, making exploration and experience easier than ever.”
Walmart has the money to reopen all its stores. Last quarter, it had global revenue of $162 billion, with $110 billion of that in the United States. U.S. operating income was $6.1 billion.
A company like Walmart can spend millions of dollars researching what people want and do not want in its stores. The newly remodeled ones are almost certainly the “way of the future,” as Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, says in the movie “The Aviator.”
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