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Don’t look now, Amazon. Walmart is coming for your customers
Walmart is strategically transforming its brand to compete directly with Amazon by enhancing its e-commerce capabilities and targeting affluent consumers. By leveraging its extensive physical store network for grocery delivery and launching Walmart+, the company is positioning itself as a viable alternative for higher-income households who previously relied on Amazon Prime, thus reshaping its brand identity and market strategy.
FastCompany: The first sign that something had changed was the Topo Chico. It arrived on our porch one afternoon—a case of it—along with Graza olive oil and La Roche-Posay face wash. When our 4-year-old announced she would eat nothing but Uncrustables for the foreseeable future, a box arrived within the hour. The prices were lower than on Amazon, and we got them faster, with no delivery fee. It turns out that my husband had gotten hooked on Walmart—all without ever setting foot in a store. Earlier this year, he discovered that our American Express card included a Walmart+ membership. He activated it on a whim.
Since then, he’s been placing orders on the app almost daily, from go-to groceries to last-minute horseradish for Passover. Fifteen years of loyalty to Amazon Prime didn’t stand a chance. We’re not alone. Something surprising is happening to America’s largest retailer. Walmart, the company that has for decades served as the nation’s destination for rural and working-class families, has quietly reinvented itself into a digital behemoth that is now taking direct aim at Amazon’s customers, who are more affluent and urban. Walmart’s U.S.
e-commerce sales account for approximately 18% of the company’s total revenue, amounting to more than $100 billion in the last fiscal year. Its e-commerce sales are growing roughly four times faster than its overall growth rate, increasing by 20% in the most recent quarter, the 11th consecutive quarter of double-digital growth. And five years ago, it launched Walmart+, a membership program that is a direct competitor to Amazon Prime, complete with benefits like a free Peacock subscription to rival Prime Video.
(At $98 per year, Walmart+ is cheaper than Amazon Prime, which costs $139 annually.) To be clear, Walmart is not about to dethrone Amazon in the realm of online shopping. With upwards of $440 billion in U.S. e-commerce sales in 2025, Amazon’s dominance is enormous and deeply entrenched. But something has shifted. Walmart has found the specific terrain— grocery delivery, last-mile fulfillment from stores , the seamless blend of digital and physical —where Amazon is weakest. And it’s exploiting that terrain with a discipline and speed that should make Amazon nervous.
Walmart’s Pitch to Affluent Shoppers Since its founding in 1962, Walmart has targeted budget-constrained families by promising low prices. Those customers are still core to the business. But for the past several years, new shoppers have quietly been showing up—those with a household income well above six figures, who shop online and order things like prestige hair color from Madison Reed and premium pet food from the Farmer’s Dog. Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData Retail, says the trend began when inflation spiked in 2022, in the aftermath of the pandemic.
“Middle- and higher-income consumers migrated to Walmart because they realized they could buy the same products they were getting elsewhere, but a bit cheaper,” he says. “When this first happened, people thought Walmart would lose these new customers when people adapted to the new price levels, but this hasn’t happened.” Indeed, during Walmart’s Q3 2025 earnings call, CEO Doug McMillon said households earning more than $100,000 accounted for 75% of the company’s market share gains in the quarter.
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Walmart's strategic shift to compete with Amazon is highly significant for the brand/design industry, showcasing a major retail transformation that directly impacts brand strategy professionals.