Walmart wants to create another Walmart

As the entire market focuses on and discusses the rapid growth of Walmart's Sam's Club in the Chinese market, there is generally less attention paid to Walmart's traditional hypermarket retail business.

However, this does not mean that Walmart has directly "laid flat" in its traditional retail business; on the contrary, Walmart has quietly begun exploring new business ventures.

Various market signals and recent media reports indicate that Walmart has new ambitions and wants to recreate another Walmart.

Walmart Quietly Opens 4 Community Stores in Shenzhen

The author noted that, according to reports from Shenzhen Commercial Daily and other media, on September 13, Walmart opened its fourth community store in the Bao'an District of Shenzhen, which quickly attracted market attention and discussion.

Community stores are not a new concept; they have existed since the era of traditional hypermarkets, similar to the comprehensive small shops located in traditional community buildings that meet the daily shopping needs of residents within the community.

As the world's largest retail giant, Walmart is willing to lower its profile and open community stores in the Chinese market, and it has already quietly opened its fourth store.

It is reported that Walmart's community stores focus on the concept of a "10-minute walking lifestyle circle," as well as a model of "approximately 500 square meters main store type, focusing on high-quality and cost-effective products for five meals a day," offering about 2,000 products, covering baked goods, fresh produce, cooked food, fast food, snacks, beverages, and some frequently needed non-food and daily necessities.

So, how do Walmart's trial community stores differ from traditional hypermarkets?

The author learned that Walmart's newly opened community stores can be summarized in three keywords: small scale, refined products, and close to the community.

The first keyword is small scale. Compared to the thousands of square meters and one or two floors of traditional hypermarkets, Walmart's community stores are relatively smaller, with the main store type being about 500 square meters.

The second keyword is refined products. Unlike the thousands of SKUs in Walmart's traditional hypermarkets, which pursue a large and comprehensive selection, Walmart's community stores significantly reduce SKUs, carefully selecting high-frequency essential products for residents' daily lives, offering both cost-effectiveness and quality-price ratio.

The third keyword is close to the community. Compared to the broader community coverage of traditional hypermarkets, Walmart's community stores have a smaller coverage area, such as covering a few residential and mixed-use communities, but generally, the locations are not remote and are often situated in prime community areas. For example, Walmart's Longhua community store is located directly across from the Longhua Sam's Club.

Another highlight of Walmart's community stores is the distinct local community characteristics. For instance, the recently opened fourth community store has a strong Guangdong flavor, directly featuring a Cantonese barbecue stall.

A senior retail industry insider told the author that Walmart's community stores were not suddenly opened this year; they have been conducting market research, model studies, and pilot projects since last year, gradually increasing the number of pilot stores and improving them for market validation.

Overall, Walmart's community stores focus on a small and refined boutique affordable community store model, representing a significant new business market strategy exploration for Walmart in the Chinese market.

The aforementioned retail industry insider analyzed that Walmart's community stores still rely on the resource support of surrounding large stores throughout the entire supply chain, such as selecting high-quality and cost-effective products from nearby large stores, using large stores to support small stores, achieving multi-point and multi-community coverage As of now, Walmart has opened 4 community stores in multiple areas of Shenzhen. Walmart China officially announced that the community store model has been successfully implemented, and it will be scaled up in Shenzhen next.

According to reports from Times Finance, on September 18, Walmart released a recruitment announcement for new community stores in Shenzhen, involving various positions such as store managers, supervisors, technicians, guiding staff, and employees. The new stores set to open are located in Bao'an District, Nanshan District, Futian District, Longhua District, and Longgang District of Shenzhen.

The author believes that after Walmart successfully replicates the community store model on a large scale in Shenzhen, it may gradually promote and implement it in other provinces and cities across the country in the future.

Walmart Aims to Create Another Walmart

So, why is retail giant Walmart opening community stores? What is its intention?

In most countries and regions around the world, especially in the Chinese market, Walmart is a giant in the retail industry, and its every move inevitably attracts market attention and discussion.

Walmart has been an important participant and promoter in the development history of China's supermarket retail. Public information shows that Walmart entered the Chinese market in 1996, opening its first Walmart Supercenter and Sam's Club in Shenzhen.

During the traditional supermarket era, Walmart was a beneficiary of the boom. According to public data, Walmart's peak in the Chinese market was around 2019, with approximately 420 stores nationwide.

However, after 2015, the supermarket industry entered a new development phase, and traditional hypermarkets began to close down, a trend that Walmart could not escape. According to public data, Walmart China reduced its number of stores from 412 in the 2020 fiscal year to 296 in the 2024 fiscal year, a decrease of over 100 stores within five fiscal years.

In the author's view, Walmart's closure of traditional hypermarket stores has significantly impacted its original hypermarket business. Walmart needs to find new business forms to compensate for the losses caused by the closure of traditional hypermarkets while also complementing existing hypermarkets and sharing supply chain resources.

Starting in 2016, Walmart began to focus on its membership-based supermarket Sam's Club, raising membership fees and accelerating store openings. Since 2020, Sam's Club has opened new stores at a rate of 5 to 6 per year. As of July this year, the number of Sam's Club stores in China has reached 56, with many more stores in the planning stages.

The Sam's Club business now accounts for two-thirds of Walmart China's overall performance and is the core business driver for Walmart China. The rapid growth and impressive performance of Sam's Club are continuously supporting the steady growth of Walmart China's performance.

If Sam's Club is Walmart's first leg of business in the Chinese market, it is clear that Walmart China is eager to find a second leg of business, and community stores are undoubtedly one of them.

Walmart has been deeply rooted in China for nearly 30 years and has conducted many localized business explorations in the Chinese market. Moreover, Walmart is very responsive to advice; when it saw that users needed home delivery, it entered the O2O space, and now Sam's Club's rapid delivery service is a successful case In the era of traditional hypermarkets, one of Walmart's major brand genes is affordability, and the key support behind it is Walmart's supply chain system and management capabilities accumulated globally and in the Chinese domestic market. Even today, many domestic supermarket brands are still learning from Walmart and Sam's Club in terms of product selection.

Moreover, Walmart has accumulated sufficient brand equity, and the key attraction of brand equity is brand trust, which ultimately occupies the mental resources of users.

Traditional hypermarkets represent the era of traditional community retail, and now, in addition to entering the membership shopping era and quality shopping era, the value of community shopping still exists in the Chinese supermarket industry. This is precisely why both domestic and foreign supermarket brands are flocking to establish community stores.

In my view, it is evident that Walmart China wants to find new business growth points and new business growth poles in the Chinese market. If Walmart's community stores expand nationwide in the future, with rapid, efficient, wide-ranging, and multi-regional development, once they achieve scale, the business volume will correspondingly increase.

Behind Walmart's community store initiative may lie Walmart China's new ambition, which is to recreate a Walmart through the community store model.

The Battle of Community Retail is in Full Swing, Players Want to Tell New Stories

In the past year or two, the Chinese supermarket retail market has been buzzing with discussions about Sam's Club's rapid growth and the explosive popularity of Pang Donglai, while the community retail market is becoming increasingly lively, with more players eager to tell new stories.

Overall, the community retail market is attracting new players, including not only established retailers but also new external entrants, and local internet giants are also competing fiercely.

Walmart is a representative of established retailers making strides in community retail. Walmart's new community store trial is indeed a refreshing change from traditional hypermarkets, providing consumers with both novelty and a sense of familiarity.

The new external player is Aldi from Germany, a brand focused on community discounts, which has been rapidly expanding in the Chinese market in recent years. By the end of August 2025, Aldi will have 78 stores in the Shanghai and Jiangsu markets, with a total sales scale of 2 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year sales growth of 100%. Recently, Aldi also initiated a wave of price reductions.

In the face of community retail, especially in the current consumer economic environment, internet giants are beginning to explore community supermarkets and discount store businesses to find new business growth points.

Leading the industry is Alibaba's Hema. In addition to aggressively opening Hema Fresh stores, Hema is fully focusing on its Hema NB business, which has been renamed Super Hema NB, and recent media reports indicate that Super Hema NB is about to start franchise recruitment.

Established e-commerce giant JD.com has also opened JD Discount Supermarkets. Even more noteworthy is the food delivery giant Meituan, which is further exploring and testing community retail and discount stores, having already opened two Happy Monkey discount stores.

All players in the community retail market are targeting China's massive trillion-level community retail market, all wanting to share a piece of the pie.

According to a report by Boyan Consulting, the scale of China's community center retail market reached 4.8 trillion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year growth of 8.5%. It is expected that by 2025, the scale of China's community center retail market will further expand to about 5.2 trillion yuan, with an increase of approximately 8.3% However, the author also noticed that in the community retail market, although the discount business sector is bustling with major players rushing in, a certain degree of homogenization has already emerged. Consumers may feel a sense of novelty when new stores open, but once that novelty wears off, it is the real test for market players.

To develop the community retail market well, it seems to be a brand competition among market players, but the key points behind it still lie in comprehensive competition in areas such as brand trust, product selection ability, quality control ability, and supply chain system management.

Overall, in the community retail market and discount retail market, market players all want to tell their new stories.

For example, Walmart's trial of community stores is also aimed at telling a new story in community retail. Meituan's foray into community retail and instant retail business aims to strengthen its retail operations. Similarly, Hema has also developed its own business model, proving its commercial value to Alibaba and the market.

The market is a mix of opportunities and challenges, and this is also true for Walmart in the community retail sector.

Walmart could easily win in the traditional hypermarket era, and now Sam's Club is soaring, unmatched by other competitors. However, in the community retail market, Walmart still has many advantages.

But with more and more market players, it also means that market competition is becoming increasingly fierce. Local brands like Hema and new market players like Aldi, as well as other traditional supermarket brands, are continuously testing and upgrading community formats, which will also create certain competitive pressure on Walmart's community stores.

The author believes that Walmart's community store model has been successfully established, but to expand into national regional markets, such as the southern market, northern market, and southwestern market, further localization of the local market is needed. Different stores should adopt different operations to better meet the needs of community shopping consumers.

Author: Wu Wenwu, Source: Xinpin Lue Finance (ID: nbscaijing), Original Title: "Walmart Wants to Create Another Walmart"

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