Walmart goes global with its Amazon-like flywheel
Walmart executives are beginning to take a more international approach to growing the retailer’s higher-margin businesses, such as advertising, memberships and its third-party marketplace.
On Thursday, Walmart+, the retailer’s paid membership program, launched in Canada — the first time it has been available outside of the U.S. It has some of the same benefits as its U.S. counterpart: unlimited free same-day delivery from stores on orders over $35, a discount on Express Delivery, free shipping with no order minimum from the Walmart Canada website and an ad-supported subscription to the Crave streaming service. The Canadian video platform offers original content, HBO and Max originals, CTV and Noovo series, and blockbuster films, among other content.
“The value proposition of Walmart+ is not limited to one country or location,” Deepak Maini, svp and general manager of Walmart+, told reporters during the company’s annual Associates Week and shareholders’ meeting Thursday. “People want to save money, save time and have more confidence in the retailer and trust for all of their needs.”
The Walmart+ membership program sits under the leadership of Walmart chief growth officer Seth Dallaire, who also oversees the Walmart Connect and Sam’s Club MAP ad businesses, Walmart Data Ventures, and the global third-party marketplace platform. Dallaire, until earlier this year, was chief growth officer just for Walmart U.S.; he now holds the same title for Walmart at a global scale.
In addition to Dallaire’s global promotion and Walmart+’s first international expansion, U.S. marketplace executive Manish Joneja also now oversees global marketplaces and fulfillment services, he said at the event in Arkansas. These are signs of Walmart’s confidence that its revenue-growth strategy can work around the world. In the U.S., advertising increased 36% year over year and e-commerce sales grew 26%. Membership fee revenue saw double-digit growth, the company said.
Dallaire told Modern Retail at the event that over the course of his now four-plus-year tenure at Walmart, he now has more of an understanding of the importance of the omnichannel nature of the business, given that he came from purely e-commerce-focused giants Instacart and Amazon.
“That’s a very different type of customer occasion that you’re serving when everything is done through a browser or an app,” Dallaire said. “There’s no or very little interaction with the customer in person, and that type of [in-person] relationship is one that Walmart has excelled in.”
Dallaire said, in contrast, that other retailers are almost exclusively physical and reluctant to get into the digital space, because they would have to build something that challenges what has made them so successful in the past. “Here, it’s different,” Dallaire said. “We serve customers, and we interact with them everywhere; that to me has been really cool, and it’s unique to Walmart at this scale.”
While U.S. executives are taking more control over the global strategy, some of these businesses already have a presence in certain countries. Last quarter, Walmart’s global e-commerce sales — including the third-party marketplace — grew 26% year over year. The global advertising business is up 37%.
Maini, the Walmart+ leader, said the plan is not to apply the exact same playbook in Canada as Walmart did in the U.S.; the plan is to partner with the Canada team to make sure it reflects Canadian shopping habits and what customers there value the most. He also said the goal with Walmart+ is not just to increase membership income but to boost shopping frequency, retail media audiences, e-commerce visits and total annual spend.
“Some people have the misconception that Walmart+ is just a delivery subscription or that it’s a reward program; in reality, Walmart+ is a relationship driver,” Maini said. “If Walmart+ is useful enough, trusted enough and relevant enough, then choosing Walmart first stops being a decision and becomes more of a habit. … Frequency drives habit, habit drives attention, and attention drives value.”
Dallaire said it has been interesting for him to watch the program tap into customers who historically have only shopped with Walmart in physical stores. “We now have the opportunity to work with them in e-commerce to create a real omnichannel business with them.”
Walmart also gets many questions from marketplace sellers about scaling into markets outside the U.S., Dallaire said. The company is now able to offer cross-border fulfillment, which Joneja said will broaden the assortment in the U.S. even further and make it easier for people in Canada or Mexico to get products from the states.
The company now picks up inventory from Vietnam and China for third-party sellers to deploy near the borders or within the U.S., Mexico or Canada. Additionally, Joneja said the company is building the systems to track tariff costs and taxes involved in shipping globally, and that the advertising business will help those sellers raise awareness throughout the three countries. “We are working on this entire platform that will make it easy for [third-party marketplace] sellers to access the customers.”
Walmart Connect, the company’s U.S. advertising business, continues to grow, as well. It has been focused on adding new ad formats and channels, notably Vizio’s connected TV platform that Walmart acquired in 2024. Ryan Mayward, general manager and svp of Walmart Connect, said that over the last couple of years, the company has found that the more touchpoints advertisers take advantage of, the more product they will sell, the more units they’ll sell and the more gross merchandising value they will acquire.
The foundation is the company’s scale of 150 million customers each week, which Mayward says helps both big and small brands acquire category share and household penetration. “We’re a partner that helps brands grow,” Mayward said. “When we help brands grow, Walmart Connect is successful and we grow.”