Earlier this year, Walmart’s fourth-quarter earnings report revealed a troubling shift in customer behavior, showing that its newest growth came from households making more than $100,000.
TheStreet retail reporter Maurie Backman detailed the news, explaining how Walmart’s results provided an economic warning: “When higher-income households begin to prioritize savings and value, it suggests that consumers may want, or need, to be more cautious overall.”
More recently, Walmart posted its full 2025 annual results, suggesting another concerning trend among today’s consumers.
Why are Walmart’s results so important for an analysis of consumer trends in the United States?
As Backman points out, Walmart is widely seen as the ultimate measure of American spending due to its size. Since it’s the largest retailer in the U.S., analyzing its sales is like looking at a snapshot of the entire country’s spending habits.
The company’s latest earnings report suggests that more consumers are changing their shopping habits, particularly by shifting more of their spending online.
Walmart’s e-commerce sales see “outsized growth“
In the full fiscal 2025, Walmart had consolidated revenue of $713.16 billion, up from $680.99 billion in 2024, according to its official annual report.
The retailer’s revenue, in constant currency, grew 5.1% to $715.9 billion and on an adjusted basis, profit grew even faster at 5.4%.
A key driver of that growth was e-commerce.
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“This performance was driven by outsized growth in eCommerce, which grew 24%, globally, to $150.4 billion. Operating cash flow reached $41.6 billion, and we returned $15.6 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases,” CEO John Furner stated in a shareholder letter.
Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce sales positively contributed approximately 4.3% and 2.9% to comparable sales for fiscal 2026 and 2025, respectively.
“This growth reflects continued strength in customer and Walmart+ member engagement with omnichannel offerings, and was primarily driven by store-fulfilled pickup and delivery,” according to Walmart’s 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Jefferies analysts also explained how Walmart’s online business is becoming more profitable than its traditional physical stores.
“Incremental e‑commerce dollars carry higher margin than stores as routing, batching, and express fees scale. About one‑third of deliveries include an express fee, and network density continues to bend profitability positively. Management is increasingly focused on total volume per store, not isolated in‑store comps,” the analysts said, as reported by Retail Dive.
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What Walmart’s e-commerce growth could signal
While the shift toward online shopping reflects convenience and value-seeking behavior, analysts and researchers say it may also carry broader implications for consumers and businesses.
Walmart has actively invested in AI-driven retail. In October 2025, Walmart unveiled a partnership with OpenAI to create AI-first shopping experiences, allowing shoppers and members to shop through ChatGPT using instant checkout.
In March 2026, the retailer confirmed it was pulling the plug on the feature and would be embedding its own chatbot, Sparky, into platforms such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
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Researchers at the Digital Watch Observatory note that large retailers may benefit disproportionately from these advances.
“AI technology provides a competitive advantage to larger e-commerce players with the resources to invest in advanced AI capabilities. This may lead to further market concentration, making it harder for smaller businesses to compete, and potentially reducing consumer choice,” reveals the report.
As more online platforms incorporate special AI technologies to handle a large part of their eCommerce business, Digital Watch Observatory highlights other concerns, including:
- Reduced human interaction in customer service
- Data privacy concerns
The idea that the growth of online shopping might lead to high casualty rates of smaller businesses came to life during the Covid pandemic lockdowns.
“Main Streets will therefore grow blander and more corporate, and a swath of storefronts will go dark permanently. That’s because the coronavirus has turbocharged the long-standing shift to online shopping,” reported The Washington Post in 2020.
The direct impact of online shopping on consumers
Studies and surveys from 2025 and 2026 reveal that online shopping, while convenient, has significant negative impacts on consumers, ranging from financial derailment and impulsive shopping behaviors to failed purchases.
Unlike cash, which provides a physical reminder of spending, online platforms create a feeling of being disconnected from real money spending, according to a 2025 study published in PMC.
“There is a feeling of being disconnected from real financial outflows when using credit cards, mobile apps, or online platforms to make purchases. This is because digital transactions are not tangible.”
Moreover, this lack of immediate visibility leads to “impulse buying and higher purchase behavior” as the smooth process reduces the mental effort typically required to make financial decisions, reveals the same study.
The bottom line is that Walmart’s e-commerce growth signals a shift in customer behavior, which may have various consequences, including:
- Small businesses decline, which leads to fewer consumer options
- Consumer data vulnerability
- Increased spending and impulsive shopping
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