2 ‘The second-worst thing a manufacturer can do is sign a contract with Wal-Mart.

The worst? Not sign one’. Explain this expression. This is not a story about rebranding. Although the US’s largest retailer has evolved its marketing, product mix, private-label offerings, agency and vendor relationships, strategy, and more, Wal-Mart insists that there’s no fundamental change in how the company operates. ‘As business and technology advance and customer habits continue to change, it requires any brand to pause and refresh or redefine as necessary’, according to Wal-Mart’s management.

That adaptability has helped Wal-Mart reverse the streak of sales declines that marked 2013 and 2014. Today, despite hiccups during the COVID-19 period, the company boasts continuous sales growth. To survive the retail carnage that pushed Sears and Kmart toward irrelevance and dragged down success stories like Target and Kroger, the $485-billion giant remade itself as a unified online-offline proposition. It has rolled out drive-thru pickup of grocery orders and has installed automated kiosks where people can collect orders inside. It’s using technology more smartly to maximize checkout orders at walmart.com. For customers who shop in person, the chain has improved its quality with revamped produce sections and higher-end exclusive or private-label apparel, food, and nonfood items.

But through all of this, Wal-Mart hasn’t lost sight of its signature low-price proposition. Although the old slogan ‘everyday low prices’ has been transformed into ‘We don’t just save you money, we allow you to live better’, the slogan is the fundamental tenet of a cult masquerading as a company. Over the years, Wal-Mart has relentlessly wrung tens of billions of dollars in cost efficiencies out of the retail supply chain, passing the larger part of the savings along to shoppers as bargain prices. In the United States, wherever Wal-Mart competes, average grocery prices are 14% lower than elsewhere.