Procter & Gamble Co. vs Walmart Inc.: Strategic Comparison

This in-depth comparison examines Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc. across revenue, market value, business model, competitive positioning, and long-term growth strategy. Whether you are researching Procter & Gamble Co. on its own, evaluating Walmart Inc., or weighing the two companies side by side, the breakdown below highlights where each company leads and where the gap between Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc. is widest.

On the headline numbers, Procter & Gamble Co. reports annual revenue of $84.3B against $713.2B for Walmart Inc., while their respective market capitalizations stand at $380.0B and $845.6B. Procter & Gamble Co. is headquartered in United States and Walmart Inc. operates from United States, and those different home markets shape how each company competes.

Procter & Gamble Co.: Neil McElroy wrote a three-page memo in 1931. He was a junior marketing executive at Procter & Gamble, frustrated that Camay soap received less internal attention than Ivory. His proposed solution — a dedicated manager responsible for a single brand's marketing, budget, and competitive strategy — became the organizational template that Unilever, Nestlé, Colgate, and every major consumer goods company subsequently adopted as standard operating structure. P&G did not invent detergent or soap or shampoo. It invented the way those products are managed. One hundred eighty-seven years after William Procter and James Gamble founded their candle and soap partnership in Cincinnati with roughly $7,192 in combined capital, the company generates $84.0 billion in annual revenue across more than 180 countries under brand names that occupy the mental shortcut position in categories their consumers never reconsider: Tide for laundry, Pampers for diapers, Gillette for razors, Head & Shoulders for dandruff. That mental shortcut — the automatic reach — is the business. Everything else is infrastructure supporting it. The 2014-2016 portfolio restructuring divested more than 100 brands, including Duracell to Berkshire Hathaway, Iams and Eukanuba to Mars, Cover Girl and Max Factor to Coty. What remained was approximately 65 brands where P&G held the number one or number two global market position. Jon Moeller, CEO since 2021, inherited a concentrated, high-quality portfolio and has driven it toward pricing power and volume growth in the years since. The $57 billion acquisition of Gillette in 2005 was the largest in P&G's history — and remains one of the most analyzed case studies in DTC disruption, as Gillette's U.S. Market share has declined from roughly 70% to approximately 50-55% since then. That decline did not happen because of inferior razors. It happened because Dollar Shave Club and Harry's demonstrated that subscription delivery and direct consumer relationships could erode brand premiums that had seemed permanent.

Walmart Inc.: Walmart generates $713.2 billion in annual revenue with a net margin around 3.1 percent — meaning roughly $22 billion falls to the bottom line from a business that employs 2.1 million people and operates stores in formats ranging from neighborhood markets to 180,000-square-foot Supercenters. The thin margin isn't a weakness; it's a deliberate pricing strategy that has destroyed competitors for six decades. The business is changing faster than the store count suggests. Advertising revenue, marketplace fees, membership income from Walmart+ and Sam's Club, and fulfillment services have added high-margin layers to a model that used to earn money only one way. These adjacent revenue streams don't show up obviously in a $713 billion revenue number, but they show up in margins. Sam Walton opened the first Walmart in Rogers, Arkansas in 1962. By 1970 the company went public. By 2000 it was the largest company in the world by revenue. The supply chain infrastructure built over those decades — cross-docking distribution centers, direct vendor relationships, proprietary logistics data — is what makes the everyday-low-price promise financially sustainable rather than merely aspirational. The Flipkart acquisition in 2018 gave Walmart a meaningful position in Indian e-commerce. The Jet.com acquisition in 2016 for $3.3 billion accelerated U.S. E-commerce capability. Neither produced the returns originally projected, but both shifted Walmart's trajectory in markets that would have been difficult to enter organically.

Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc. pursue distinct approaches to generating revenue, and understanding how each company operates is the foundation of any fair comparison between Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc..

Procter & Gamble Co. business model: Procter & Gamble Co. is a Cincinnati-based consumer packaged goods giant that sells household, personal care, and health products across more than 180 countries. P&G's pricing strategy is central to its financial model. In fiscal year 2024, pricing actions contributed meaningfully to organic sales growth as the company passed through input cost inflation accumulated during 2021 and 2022. This investment in product performance is what enables the premium pricing that drives margins superior to most of P&G's retail customers. This investment level creates a virtuous cycle: heavy marketing supports premium pricing, premium pricing funds R&D investment, R&D investment creates product superiority, and product superiority justifies continued marketing investment. Beyond these traditional competitors, P&G faces a second tier of competitive pressure from digital-native challenger brands that have emerged over the past decade using direct-to-consumer channels, social media marketing, and subscription models to build brand relationships without the retail distribution infrastructure that P&G and its traditional peers rely on. Dollar Shave Club's assault on the razor category — culminating in a one billion dollar acquisition by Unilever in 2016 — demonstrated that Gillette's pricing model was vulnerable to subscription disruption. Native deodorant, Harry's razors, Billie women's razors, and numerous other digital-native personal care brands have captured meaningful share in their respective subcategories by offering narrative differentiation, direct consumer relationships, and pricing below P&G's premium positioning. Net sales reached approximately 84 billion dollars, essentially flat compared to the 82 billion dollars reported in fiscal year 2023 on a reported basis, as pricing actions that had driven growth in prior years matured and volume came under pressure in certain categories where price gaps with private label had widened. The inflationary surge of 2021 through 2023 compressed P&G's gross margins before pricing actions could catch up, and the company spent multiple quarters absorbing costs before the pricing toolkit restored margin levels. The Dollar Shave Club model — digital-native brands selling directly to consumers through subscription mechanics that bypass traditional retail — demonstrated that P&G's retail distribution advantage could be neutralized by a sufficiently differentiated brand with a compelling digital acquisition strategy. It translates to measurable pricing power, lower customer acquisition costs than any new entrant in those categories, and retailer preference for shelf space allocation because P&G brands drive category sales velocity. P&G has built dedicated digital commerce teams, invested in search optimization across Amazon and Google Shopping, developed subscription-friendly packaging formats, and experimented with direct-to-consumer platforms for premium brands like Oral-B and SK-II. Management has guided for fiscal year 2025 organic sales growth in the range of three to five percent, a realistic target given the moderating pricing tailwinds and the need to recover volume in categories where pricing had outpaced consumer willingness to pay.

Walmart Inc. business model: Walmart's revenue model is deceptively simple on the surface — buy stuff, sell stuff, repeat — but the economics underneath have shifted dramatically in the past five years. The company still makes most of its $713.2 billion from selling physical goods through physical stores. That hasn't changed. What's changed is what happens around those transactions. Start with the core: Walmart U.S. Generates roughly $460 billion in net sales annually. About 60% of that is grocery — milk, eggs, produce, frozen meals, cleaning supplies. The margins on grocery are thin, often below 20% gross. But grocery is the reason a family visits Walmart 4.2 times per month instead of once. Every trip past the produce aisle is a trip past pharmacy ($4 generics, vaccinations, health screenings), past general merchandise (where margins run 30-40%), past seasonal displays, past the impulse buys near checkout. Grocery is the loss leader that funds everything else. Sam's Club contributes approximately $90 billion through a different mechanism: membership fees. The $50-$110 annual fee from roughly 47 million members generates high-margin recurring revenue before a single item is scanned. The merchandise itself is sold at near-cost — the profit is in the membership, not the product. It's the Costco model, and Sam's Club has finally started executing it well after years of underperformance. Walmart International — about $120 billion — is a patchwork. Walmex in Mexico is a powerhouse, essentially the dominant retailer in the country. Canada is stable and profitable. China is complicated. India, through Flipkart and PhonePe, is a long-term bet on digital commerce in a market of 1.4 billion people where e-commerce penetration is still in single digits. Now here's where it gets interesting. Layered on top of the merchandise business are three high-margin revenue streams that barely existed five years ago: Walmart Connect — the advertising business — sells sponsored product placements, display ads, and now connected-TV inventory (via the VIZIO acquisition) to brands desperate to reach consumers at the moment of purchase. This business grew 37% in Q4 FY2026 and likely generates margins above 50%. For context: selling a $3 box of cereal might generate $0.15 in profit. Selling an ad to the cereal company that appears when a shopper searches "breakfast" on the Walmart app might generate $2-5 in pure margin. The math is significant. Walmart+ membership ($98/year) creates subscription revenue while locking in delivery habits. It's smaller than Amazon Prime — probably 20-30 million members versus Prime's 200+ million — but it's growing, and each member spends significantly more than non-members. Marketplace seller fees and Walmart Fulfillment Services generate commission and logistics revenue from third-party sellers who want access to Walmart's customer base without Walmart bearing inventory risk. The operating margins tell the real story: approximately 4-5% on $713 billion in revenue. That's about $28-35 billion in operating income. Sounds enormous until you realize that a 1% swing in gross margin — from a bad quarter of markdowns, or a spike in shrinkage, or a logistics cost overrun — wipes out $7 billion. The business runs on volume and velocity, not fat margins. Every efficiency gain matters. Every basis point of shrinkage reduction matters. That's why Walmart spends billions annually on supply chain automation, demand forecasting AI, and inventory management systems that most shoppers never see.

The durability of a company's moat often decides long-term winners. Here is how the competitive advantages of Procter & Gamble Co. stack up against those of Walmart Inc..

Procter & Gamble Co. competitive advantage: The execution of that premise at global scale across nearly two centuries is what transforms a simple idea into one of the most sophisticated commercial operations in American corporate history. The company's scale creates purchasing leverage with raw material suppliers, enabling cost advantages that flow through to margin even after marketing and R&D investments are made. This matrix structure enables category specialization while capturing scale economies in shared services — a balance that P&G has refined over decades. Procter & Gamble's competitive advantages are neither accidental nor easily replicated. The most powerful advantage is brand equity at scale. Building equivalent brand equity from scratch in even a single category would require decades of investment and an enormous tolerance for uncertainty — barriers that protect P&G's position more durably than any patent or regulatory advantage. Consumer research capability represents a second, less visible but equally powerful advantage. Scale-driven cost advantages in both supply chain and marketing are a third structural moat. Brand superiority investment means P&G will continue to spend at or above industry average rates on R&D and marketing, with increasing emphasis on performance advertising that documents measurable product advantages over private-label and competitive alternatives.

Walmart Inc. competitive advantage: Consider what it would actually take to replicate Walmart's position from scratch. You'd need to acquire or build 4,700 stores positioned within ten miles of 90% of the U.S. Population — that's roughly $200 billion in real estate alone, assuming you could find the locations. You'd need relationships with tens of thousands of suppliers willing to give you their lowest wholesale prices — which they won't, because your volume doesn't justify it yet. You'd need a distribution network of 210+ facilities with a private fleet of 12,000+ trucks. You'd need 2.1 million trained employees. You'd need sixty years of brand recognition among American households. Nobody is doing that. Not Amazon, not Costco, not any private equity consortium. The physical infrastructure is the advantage, and it's essentially unreplicable at this point. But the more interesting defensive asset is behavioral. Walmart has embedded itself into the weekly routine of American households in a way that's almost invisible. People don't "decide" to shop at Walmart the way they decide to buy a new iPhone or subscribe to Netflix. They just. Go. It's Tuesday, the fridge is empty, the Walmart is seven minutes away. That habitual, low-consideration purchase behavior is extraordinarily sticky. It doesn't require brand love or emotional loyalty — it requires proximity and price, both of which Walmart dominates. The grocery frequency creates a data advantage that compounds over time. Walmart sees what 240 million people buy every week — not what they browse or click, but what they actually put in their cart and take home. That purchase data is gold for the advertising business, for demand forecasting, for private-label development, and for supplier negotiations. Amazon has browsing data and delivery data, but Walmart has in-store basket data at a scale nobody else touches. The store network also functions as a fulfillment advantage that pure e-commerce players can't match for perishable goods. You can't ship bananas from a centralized warehouse 800 miles away. You need local inventory, cold chain, and same-day capability. Walmart has all three, already built, already staffed, already stocked — in 4,700 locations. Amazon is spending billions trying to build grocery delivery infrastructure that Walmart inherited from decades of supercenter expansion.

Future prospects matter as much as current results. The growth strategies below explain how Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc. each plan to expand from here.

Procter & Gamble Co. growth strategy: The company has increased its dividend for 68 consecutive years as of 2024, placing it in the elite category of Dividend Kings — companies with more than 50 unbroken years of dividend growth. In the 2010s, the company undertook one of the most radical portfolio restructurings in Fortune 500 history, shedding more than 100 brands and reducing its portfolio from roughly 170 brands down to approximately 65 core brands — essentially walking away from billions of dollars in revenue in a bet that focus would drive superior returns. The remaining brands accelerated growth, margins expanded, and the stock delivered superior long-term returns to investors who stayed patient through the transition. It reflects a particular institutional philosophy: that deep investment in understanding consumers, building brands that earn genuine loyalty, and maintaining financial discipline through cycles of boom and contraction creates compounding value that short-term competitors cannot replicate. Today, as e-commerce reshapes retail distribution, as private-label products improve and expand, and as consumers in developing markets develop brand preferences for the first time, P&G faces its most complex competitive environment since the mid-twentieth century. P&G is widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated brand-building and consumer research organizations in global commerce, having pioneered modern marketing practices including brand management systems, consumer panel research, and sponsored broadcast media entertainment that shaped the broader advertising industry across the twentieth century. Procter & Gamble's business model rests on a deceptively simple premise: identify the categories where consumers make frequent, habitual purchases, build brands in those categories that consumers trust more than any alternative, invest continuously in product superiority and innovation, and distribute those products through every channel where consumers shop. The company sells through an extraordinarily broad channel network including mass merchandisers, grocery chains, club stores, drug stores, and rapidly expanding e-commerce platforms. Research and development investment is a defining financial commitment. The company holds thousands of patents and employs thousands of scientists and engineers whose work enables P&G to launch products that are genuinely superior — or at least demonstrably different — from private-label alternatives. Marketing and advertising investment is similarly defining. The company's supply chain and manufacturing model supports this commercial strategy with significant fixed capital investment. P&G's commitment to operational efficiency is reflected in its ongoing productivity programs, which have consistently targeted one billion dollars or more in annual cost savings that are recycled into competitive investments. P&G's management philosophy prioritizes organic investment first, followed by bolt-on acquisitions in strategically important categories, with surplus cash returned to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. Share repurchases supplement dividend growth, with the company reducing its diluted share count meaningfully over the past decade, which amplifies per-share earnings growth even in periods of modest top-line expansion. The company's financial position as of June 30, 2024 was characterized by strong liquidity, an investment-grade credit rating, and a balance sheet that supports both ongoing dividend increases and continued share repurchase activity. The Unilever-P&G rivalry has shaped the economics of markets from Brazil to India to the United Kingdom for decades, with both companies fighting for shelf space, distribution partnerships, and consumer loyalty across overlapping categories. Colgate's global distribution strength in emerging markets, where it has historically maintained share positions even stronger than in the United States, creates competitive tension in exactly the growth markets P&G is prioritizing for its next decade of expansion. The third competitive dimension is private label, whose strategic importance has grown substantially in the post-pandemic inflationary period. Retailers at every price point — from Walmart's Great Value line to Costco's Kirkland Signature to Amazon's own-brand household products — have invested in private-label quality improvement precisely because their margins on private label substantially exceed the margins they earn on branded products. P&G's response has been to invest more aggressively in demonstrable product superiority, running comparative performance advertising that documents measurable differences between Tide and store-brand alternatives in measurable metrics like stain removal efficacy. The focus strategy has produced results: the organic sales growth rates of P&G's retained brand portfolio have consistently exceeded the rates the divested brands were generating. P&G has invested in building its digital commerce capabilities precisely because the skills required to win on Amazon or at TikTok Shop are meaningfully different from the skills required to win at Walmart or Kroger — and because falling behind in digital commerce means ceding future market share in channels that are growing at the expense of channels where P&G has historically been dominant. Organic sales growth — which excludes the impact of foreign exchange, acquisitions, and divestitures — was approximately 4 percent for the fiscal year, demonstrating that underlying business momentum remained positive even as reported sales figures were compressed by a stronger dollar. In fiscal year 2024, foreign exchange headwinds reduced reported sales growth meaningfully, with the strengthening dollar masking organic growth that looked stronger in local currency terms. Consumers, investors, and regulators are increasingly scrutinizing plastic packaging, chemical formulations, and supplier labor practices. They represent the accumulated product of 187 years of institutional learning, brand investment, and consumer relationship building. P&G has invested in understanding consumer behavior since the 1920s, building proprietary methodologies, consumer panels, and in-home research programs that generate insights about how people actually use products that no market research firm can replicate on P&G's behalf. Finally, P&G's retail relationships — built over generations of reliable supply, category management partnership, and joint business planning — create distribution access that new entrants cannot quickly replicate. Retailers allocate premium shelf space, promotional support, and data sharing to partners they trust and have worked with across multiple business cycles. Procter & Gamble's growth strategy is built around what management calls the Integrated Growth Strategy — a framework that combines portfolio focus, consumer understanding, brand superiority, go-to-market excellence, and a productive cost structure to drive balanced top and bottom-line growth across cycles. The portfolio dimension of this strategy means continuing to concentrate investment in the approximately 65 brands that currently constitute P&G's core portfolio — brands where P&G holds or contests the number one or two market position globally. Management has been explicit that the company is not interested in rebuilding a sprawling portfolio of peripheral brands; the lesson of the 2014 to 2019 portfolio transformation is that focus creates better returns than breadth. The company's superiority framework evaluates each brand across five dimensions — product, package, brand communication, retail execution, and consumer and customer value — and brands that fall short on any dimension receive targeted investment to close the gap. Channel expansion, particularly in e-commerce and digital commerce, represents the primary go-to-market growth initiative. Geographic expansion in developing markets, particularly India, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, provides volume growth opportunities that are unavailable in saturated North American and Western European markets. P&G's strategy in these markets emphasizes affordable product formats, rural distribution development, and localized marketing that connects with consumers whose cultural context, media consumption habits, and purchasing occasions differ meaningfully from the developed-market consumers P&G has historically served. Procter & Gamble's forward strategic agenda is defined by three broad priorities that management has articulated consistently across investor communications: accelerating organic growth through continued investment in product superiority and marketing effectiveness, expanding its presence in digital commerce and direct-to-consumer channels, and extending the reach of its portfolio into fast-growing developing markets where rising middle-class populations represent the single largest untapped opportunity in consumer goods. The developing market opportunity is the most consequential long-term growth driver. In India, where P&G estimates that less than one in three households currently uses a modern diaper product, the demographic and income growth trajectory suggests decades of volume expansion ahead for Pampers as the middle class expands. P&G's challenge is building distribution reach and price-point offerings that match local purchasing power — a capability that requires patient, multi-year market development investment rather than the extract-and-optimize approach that works in mature markets. The sustainability imperative will shape P&G's capital investment priorities and product development roadmap for years to come. Meeting these commitments while maintaining product performance requires significant innovation investment in packaging materials science and formulation chemistry that P&G is funding through its R&D budget. On October 31, 1837, Procter and Gamble signed a partnership agreement and established the firm of Procter & Gamble with combined capital of approximately 7,192 dollars and 28 cents — a sum that historian Davis Dyer, in his centenary history of the company, identifies as the modest but sufficient beginning of what would become one of the world's largest enterprises. The Miami and Erie Canal, completed in 1845, would eventually connect Cincinnati to Lake Erie, further expanding its commercial reach. James Gamble, the soap maker, focused on production and chemistry — on improving formulations, reducing waste, and increasing output efficiency. Growth in the early years was driven by contract work supplying the Union Army during the Civil War. P&G won contracts to supply soldiers with soap and candles, which accomplished two strategic objectives simultaneously: it generated substantial revenue that allowed the company to expand manufacturing capacity, and it introduced millions of young Americans — many of whom had never used commercially-manufactured soap before enlisting — to P&G products for the first time. Ivory's success established the commercial foundation that would allow P&G to grow from a regional manufacturer into a national consumer products company over the following four decades — and demonstrated for the first time the formula of product differentiation plus aggressive mass marketing that would define the company's competitive strategy for the next century and a half.

Walmart Inc. growth strategy: Walmart's growth bet is straightforward, even if the execution is brutally complex: use the weekly grocery trip as a platform to sell higher-margin services. Advertising is the crown jewel. Walmart Connect grew 37% in Q4 FY2026, and management has signaled this is still early innings. The logic is compelling — brands have always paid for shelf placement in physical stores (those end-cap displays aren't free), and now they'll pay for digital shelf placement too. The VIZIO acquisition in 2024 added connected-TV advertising to the mix, meaning Walmart can now sell ads that follow a shopper from their living room TV to the Walmart app to the in-store digital display. That closed-loop attribution is what advertisers crave, and it's something only retailers with massive first-party purchase data can offer. Marketplace expansion is the volume play. Walmart.com now hosts hundreds of thousands of third-party sellers, dramatically expanding the product catalog without requiring Walmart to buy or warehouse inventory. Each seller pays referral fees (typically 6-15%), and many pay for Walmart Fulfillment Services and Walmart Connect ads on top of that. The flywheel is obvious: more sellers means more selection, which means more shoppers, which attracts more sellers. Automation is the cost play. Online grocery delivery is currently unprofitable at scale — the labor cost of picking, packing, and delivering a $120 grocery order eats the margin entirely. Walmart is investing heavily in automated micro-fulfillment centers inside existing stores, where robots pick ambient and refrigerated items while human associates handle produce and fragile goods. The goal is to cut the cost-per-order for e-commerce fulfillment by 30-50% over the next three years. The international portfolio is selective. Flipkart in India is the big swing — a market where 900 million people will come online as shoppers over the next decade. Walmex in Mexico is the steady compounder. Everything else is either stable (Canada) or being managed for returns rather than growth (China, Chile). Notably absent from this strategy: dramatic store expansion in the U.S. Walmart isn't building hundreds of new supercenters. The 4,700 existing U.S. Stores are the infrastructure. The strategy is to extract more revenue and profit per square foot from what already exists.

A closer look at the financial trajectory of Procter & Gamble Co. and Walmart Inc. rounds out the comparison.

Procter & Gamble Co.: Walmart accounts for approximately 16% of P&G's annual net sales — roughly $13 to $14 billion — making it the single largest customer relationship in the company's portfolio. That concentration matters: when Walmart wants a better price, P&G must decide how much of its margin to defend versus concede. The vendor-managed inventory model P&G pioneered with Walmart in the late 1980s gave Procter operational visibility into retail sell-through data that most manufacturers could not access. The relationship has been mutually profitable and structurally uncomfortable for four decades. Revenue grew from $76.1 billion in fiscal year 2021 to $84.0 billion in fiscal year 2024 — consistent, moderate growth driven primarily by pricing rather than volume. In fiscal year 2024, pricing actions contributed to revenue growth while volume in some categories was flat or slightly negative, reflecting the consumer response to sustained price increases across the portfolio. Net income of $14.88 billion at an 17.7% net margin is the product of a business that generates consistent cash flows and manages its cost structure with precision. Market capitalization of $390 billion — more than four times annual revenue — reflects investor confidence in the durability of P&G's brand premiums and dividend growth streak. Sixty-eight consecutive years of dividend increases creates a specific investor base that expects continuation; any disruption to that streak would represent a significant signaling event. P&G spent approximately $2.3 billion on research and development and $8 billion on advertising in fiscal year 2024. The $8 billion advertising number is particularly striking — it is larger than the total revenue of most consumer goods companies, and it is what maintains the brand awareness and shelf preference that justify the premium pricing. Without that investment, the brand premiums erode. The $8 billion is not a cost. It is the mechanism by which the $14.88 billion in net income continues to be possible.

Walmart Inc.: Revenue grew from $611.3 billion in fiscal 2023 to $713.2 billion in fiscal 2026, a pace that represents roughly $100 billion in additional annual revenue over three years — a figure larger than most Fortune 500 companies' total revenues. Grocery volume, U.S. E-commerce growth, Sam's Club membership expansion, and the international segment all contributed. The $845.6 billion market capitalization against $713.2 billion in revenue implies a price-to-sales multiple above one — a premium to what a pure grocer would command, reflecting the market pricing in the advertising, marketplace, and membership businesses as higher-multiple growth assets embedded inside the retail operation. The net income figure is not separately disclosed in the available data, but at a 3.1 percent margin on $713.2 billion, the implied earnings are substantial in absolute terms while modest as a percentage. That combination — large absolute earnings, thin margins — is exactly the arithmetic that makes Walmart's competitive position so durable. Matching its pricing requires matching its cost structure, which requires matching its volume, which is circular. Advertising revenue is the financial development worth watching closely over the next decade. Walmart Connect, the advertising platform, operates at margins that bear no resemblance to retail. Every transaction in every store and on Walmart.com generates data about what customers buy, when, and at what price — data that consumer goods companies will pay significant fees to target precisely.