Walmart saw online sales increase 79 percent in Q3 as consumers modify shopping behavior

Shawn Knight

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Editor's take: Grocers for years have been trying to find ways to replicate the success that other retailers have had selling online. They’ve largely fell short for a variety of reasons but now with the pandemic, that is all changing. Factor in the sheer convenience of online shopping and the fact that no end is in sight on the pandemic front and it is easy to see how online shopping (namely in the grocery sector) could be here to stay.

Walmart’s business continues to be impacted by the ongoing global health crisis, and not exactly in a bad way.

Total revenue for the three months ending October 31, 2020, reached $134.7 billion, an increase of 5.2 percent compared to the same period a year earlier. Even more impressive is the fact that eCommerce sales in the US were up a whopping 79 percent during the quarter.

The high mark serves as further indication of how consumers are modifying their behavior during the pandemic, increasingly electing to limit their exposure to others by shopping online and having groceries delivered to their homes or ready for curbside pickup at their local store.

Heading into the holidays, there's no indication that online shopping is going to slow down in the final few months of 2020.

Image credit: Tada Images, rchat

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To clarify, they have a 79% online NET sales growth, which means the gross profit increased that much and is not an indicator of their entire eCommerce sales growth. If someone was making $1 profit of $100 total sales, then a 100% net sales growth could mean they moved to making $2 profit of $100 total sales. It's nice, but it's different from saying they moved to $2 profit of $200 sales growth (which is also a 100% net sales growth but instead includes a 100% top line growth as well).

I don't believe Walmart breaks down their eCommerce revenue, they only give a small number of KPIs from what I saw. So how much of this growth is efficiency gains and how much is the business growing is hard to say.
 
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