Walmart

Walmart US CEO told investors that they’re “seeing opportunities” for price rollbacks despite the inflationary environment. “John Furner — President, Chief Executive Officer, Walmart U.S.: When it comes to pricing, we really take a long-term view on this. And we manage pricing for both customers and shareholders. We’re constantly monitoring our share, our price gaps to competitors. And we’ll continue to do that as we move forward. And then what we’re seeing right now is not only gaps that we’re proud of that are valuable for our customers, but we’re also seeing the opportunity to increase some of our rollbacks in stores. And we’re really proud of the team. We’re seeing about the same number of rollbacks now that we had at the end of Q1 last year. So, while we have supply chain challenges and other costs coming through, the teams are doing a nice job managing mix and pricing, and looking after both our customers and our shareholders.” (Walmart Q4 2022 Earnings Call, 2/17/2022)

Walmart CEO: “during periods of inflation like this, middle-income families, lower-middle-income families, even wealthier families become more price sensitive. And that’s to our advantage. “ “Doug McMillon — President, Chief Executive Officer, Walmart: And, Michael, you started by saying that the Walmart U.S. customer looks like the U.S. population, and it does to a really large degree. And so, we’ll serve everybody. And during periods of inflation like this, middle-income families, lower-middle-income families, even wealthier families become more price sensitive. And that’s to our advantage. So, we’ve been through this before. You know, and we run with inflation around the world all the time. Inflation is a different environment in the U.S. right now than it has been in recent times for sure. But we’ve been dealing with inflation in South America and Mexico and other places and just to kind of understand what that looks like.” (Walmart Q4 2022 Earnings Call, 2/17/2022)

Walmart US CEO explained that price rollbacks allowed them to compete for customers concerned about inflationary pressure.“John Furner — President, Chief Executive Officer, Walmart U.S.: Hey, Ben. It’s John. Thanks for the question. On, you know, the rollback, this is all about making sure the customers see value.At a time when prices are rising in so many parts of the economy, being able to offer customer value and find inflation is what we do. It’s what our merchants do. And, you know, that will continue. As I said earlier, the counter-rollbacks today is up pretty significantly from the end of the third quarter and about to where it was at the end of the first quarter last year.So, I’d say I was just — I was in the store across the street early this morning, and we’ve got rollbacks in consumer electronics and parts of dry grocery. And those values really matter as customers become more concerned and they think more about inflationary pressures. So, we’ll continue to be an everyday-low-price retailer. That’s our platform. We want to offer great values with price gaps to deliver for shareholders as well each and every day that we operate. But we’ll make sure that customers see value in key categories as we get into this year.” (Walmart Q4 2022 Earnings Call, 2/17/2022)

Walmart’s CEO: “we use rollbacks to communicate not only the reality of prices are coming down at some places, but the emotion or perception we want customers to have about us.” “Doug McMillon — President, Chief Executive Officer, Walmart: Good. You know, around the world, Scot, retailers are all having to manage this. And we talk about price gaps, our price leadership position for a reason because prices are relative. And it’s more fluid in an inflationary environment like this, so we have to spend more of our time paying attention to that. We do mix across categories. We think about things like opening price points and protecting for a lower-income family some of the things that they need from a staples point of view. And then as John mentioned, we use rollbacks to communicate not only the reality of prices are coming down at some places, but the emotion or perception we want customers to have about us being there for them and earning their trust during a period of time like this. So, I wouldn’t say that we’re unique in having to work through that.” (Walmart Q4 2022 Earnings Call, 2/17/2022)