Are Walmart’s 5,200 Stores Enough?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Are Walmart’s 5,200 Stores Enough?

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Walmart has over 10,000 locations worldwide. Over 5,200 are in the US. Based on how much reach Walmart has geographically and the store counts of competition, it is worth the question of whether that is enough.

Walmart’s store count in the US falls into several categories. Walmart Supercenters at 3,561, Walmart Discount Stores at 361, Neighborhood Markets at 677, Convenience Stores at 8, Small Format Stores at 8, Sam’s Club locations at 77, and pick-up locations at 1. That totals 5,283. Sam’s Club targets small businesses and not consumers. Its direct competitor is Staples.

Analysis of Walmart’s store footprint by several organizations shows that, in sum, its locations are within 10 miles of 90% of the US population. That is impossible to show but probably directionally correct. Target, a direct competition for a large portion of Walmart’s inventory, has only 1,948 stores. Kroger is also a major competitor because groceries are a large portion of Walmart’s US revenue. It has 2,916 locations.

Walmart’s location map shows that its store count dwarfs the counts of its competitors. However, it has another benefit that is not physical store based. Its online presence and revenue are well short of Amazon.com’s but well ahead of other retailers. Estimates put the annual e-commerce number for Walmart at $82 billion. Amazon’s annual e-commerce North American revenue runs about $350 billion.

How much direct competition does Walmart have in the bricks and mortgage category? Almost none. E-commerce only enhances that advantage.

Also Read: 30 Everyday Items That Are Cheaper at Dollar Tree Than at Walmart

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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