Its operations and subsidiaries in Canada,[20] the United Kingdom (ASDA),[21] Central America, Chile (Líder), and China are successful, but its ventures failed in Germany, Japan, South Korea, Brazil and Argentina.

[33] One reason for Wal-Mart's success between 1980 and 2000 is believed to be its contiguous pattern of expansion over time, building new distribution centers in a hub and spoke framework within driving distance of existing Supercenters.

[34] The company's satellite network was also completed in 1987, a $24 million investment linking all stores with two-way voice and data transmissions and one-way video communications with the Bentonville office.

Kenneth Stone, a professor of economics, found that some small towns can lose almost half of their retail trade within ten years of a Wal-Mart store opening.

[54] In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005, Wal-Mart used its logistics network to organize a rapid response to the disaster, donating $20 million, 1,500 truckloads of merchandise, food for 100,000 meals, and the promise of a job for every one of its displaced workers.

[79] In July 2014, American actor and comedian Tracy Morgan launched a lawsuit against Walmart seeking punitive damages over a multi-car pile-up which the suit alleges was caused by the driver of one of the firm's tractor-trailers who had not slept for 24 hours.

Doug McMillon, Walmart's CEO, said, "We are early in the stages of assessing the opportunities tax reform creates for us to invest in our customers and associates and to further strengthen our business, all of which should benefit our shareholders.

[5] These stock general merchandise and a full-service supermarket, including meat and poultry, baked goods, delicatessen, frozen foods, dairy products, garden produce, and fresh seafood.

Many Walmart Supercenters also have a garden center, pet shop, pharmacy, Tire & Lube Express, optical center, one-hour photo processing lab, portrait studio, and numerous alcove shops, such as cellular phone stores, hair and nail salons, video rental stores, local bank branches (such as Woodforest National Bank branches in newer locations), and fast food outlets.

A Moody's Investors Service analyst said the wider company's pricing structure gives the chain of grocery stores a "competitive advantage" over competitors Whole Foods Market, Kroger and Trader Joe's.

[179][180] In June 2016, Walmart and Sam's Club announced that they would begin testing a last-mile grocery delivery that used services including Uber, Lyft, and Deliv, to bring customers' orders to their homes.

[258] In December 2021, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection warned Walmart about removing products made from inputs from Xinjiang in response to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

[292] On October 2, 2020, it was announced that Walmart will sell a majority stake of Asda to a consortium of Zuber and Mohsin Issa (the owners of EG Group) and private equity firm TDR Capital for £6.8bn, pending approval from the Competition and Markets Authority.

A follow-up investigation by The New York Times, published December 17, 2012, revealed evidence that regulatory permission for siting, construction, and operation of nineteen stores had been obtained through bribery.

Comparisons of performance metrics such as sales per square foot suggest that supermarkets in direct competition with Walmart Supercenters show significant decreases in profit margins, an effect that is strongest in the case of unionized competitors.

[417] Walmart has carried clean versions of hip-hop audio CDs and in cooperation with The Timothy Plan, placed "plastic sheathes over suggestive women's periodicals and banned 'lad mags' such as Maxim" magazine.

[419][420] In 2006, Walmart took steps to expand its U.S. customer base, announcing a modification in its U.S. stores from a "one-size-fits-all" merchandising strategy to one designed to "reflect each of six demographic groups—African-Americans, the affluent, empty-nesters, Hispanics, suburbanites, and rural residents".

[411] Walmart has also made steps to appeal to more liberal customers, for example, by rejecting the American Family Association's recommendations and carrying the DVD Brokeback Mountain, a love story between two gay cowboys in Wyoming.

[425][424] Following the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in October 2020, Walmart temporarily removed gun and ammunition displays in thousands of stores across the U.S. from sales floors, grounding their reason in concerns of civil unrest.

Company spokesman Kory Lundberg said in a statement that "We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers."

"[448] A study in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) measured the effect on consumer welfare and found that the poorest segment of the population benefits the most from the existence of discount retailers.

[450] Kenneth Stone, Professor of Economics at Iowa State University, in a paper published in Farm Foundation (1997), found that some small towns can lose almost half of their retail trade within ten years of a Walmart store opening.

Comparisons of performance metrics such as sales per square foot suggest that supermarkets and other high-volume retailers in direct competition with Walmart Supercenters show significant decreases in profit margins.

By including products at both top and bottom price points, and offering temporary promotions on those items, retailers could attract both customers who were price-conscious and those interested in a wider range of options.

In April 2019, Walmart Inc. announced plans to extend the use of robots in stores in order to improve and monitor inventory, clean floors and unload trucks, part of the company's effort to lower its labor costs.

[487] In the Human Rights Campaign's (HRC) 2002 Corporate Equality Index, a measure of how companies treat LGBT employees and customers, gave Wal-Mart Stores Inc. a score of 14%.

[512] Walmart's cage-free eggs will not come from free range producers, but rather industrial-scale farms where the birds will be allotted between 1 and 1.5 square feet each, a stressful arrangement which can cause cannibalism.

[515] In May 2019, the Center for Inquiry filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia alleging consumer fraud and the endangering of its customers' health due to Walmart's practice of "selling homeopathic [products] alongside real medicine, in the same sections in its stores, under the same signs", according to Nicholas Little, CFI's vice president and general counsel.

[524][525] According to an August 2016 report by Bloomberg Businessweek, aggressive cost-cutting decisions that began in 2000 when Lee Scott took over as CEO of the company led to a significant increase in crime in stores across the United States.

[526][455] In 2015, under CEO Doug McMillon, Walmart began a company-wide campaign to reduce crime that included spot-checking receipts at exits, stationing employees at self-checkout areas, eye-level security cameras in high-theft areas, use of data analytics to detect credit fraud, hiring off-duty police and private security officers, and reducing calls to police with a program by which first-time offenders caught stealing merchandise below a certain value can avoid arrest if they agree to go through a theft-prevention program.