Walmart’s e-commerce is past 23% of U.S. sales, and stores are being reworked into the fulfillment layer

Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce business is now too large to treat as a bolt-on. In the company’s fiscal 2027 second quarter, Walmart U.S. e-commerce sales grew 24% year over year and represent more than 23% of the segment’s sales mix, according to Walmart’s earnings release cited by Retail Dive.

That one figure changes the operating model inside the store. The Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart’s latest quarter shows growth increasingly coming from e-commerce, membership, and advertising rather than the physical stores themselves. Yet Walmart CFO John David Rainey has been explicit that stores remain vital as retail becomes more omnichannel, Retail Dive reported. Put those together and the implication is clear: stores are being reworked into the fulfillment layer for digital growth, even when the revenue is booked elsewhere.

A 23% e-commerce mix forces store redesign decisions, not just website decisions

Retail Dive reported that Walmart’s transactions and average ticket for Walmart U.S. each grew more than 1% year over year in the quarter. That matters because it suggests volume is still there. The question for operators is where the work lands.

When digital becomes roughly a quarter of the mix, the binding constraint often shifts from marketing and assortment to execution physics: where picked items stage, how refrigerated and frozen orders are held, which aisles can tolerate more picker traffic, and how quickly exceptions get resolved. Walmart’s characterization that stores have “evolved” alongside e-commerce growth is effectively an admission that store layouts, labor models, and inventory processes are being tuned for omnichannel throughput, not just shopper experience, as Retail Dive framed it.

The Wall Street Journal’s reporting that stores “aren’t the engine” of growth is less a downgrade of physical retail and more a pointer to how value is being created. If e-commerce, membership, and advertising are the growth drivers, stores become the execution substrate that protects service levels, keeps substitution low, and makes delivery promises credible.

Membership and advertising pull stores deeper into the demand signal

Retail media and membership change the rhythm of store demand. The Wall Street Journal described Walmart’s growth as increasingly tied to e-commerce, membership, and advertising sales. Those businesses tend to compress planning cycles: a paid media push can move volume in hours, and members expect fewer excuses when items are out of stock.

For retail operators, that tight coupling shows up as a need to connect three datasets that historically lived apart: ad calendars, digital availability, and store-level inventory integrity. If an ad conversion is happening online but fulfillment is happening in a store, the consequences of phantom inventory are no longer contained to a single aisle. They turn into refunds, substitutions, delayed deliveries, and customer care load.

Walmart hasn’t published store-by-store process changes in these reports, but the direction of travel suggests a procurement shift: more spend and attention on inventory accuracy tooling, item-level scanning discipline, pick-path optimization, and labor management systems that can flex for order spikes. At a 23% e-commerce mix, shaving minutes off pick-pack time and lowering exception rates is equivalent to adding capacity without building a new node.

Comparable sales headwinds make execution resilience the real competitive advantage

Retail Dive reported that Walmart’s U.S. comps in the quarter were softened by drug pricing regulation. The detail matters less than the pattern: when a high-frequency category gets disrupted by pricing or regulatory changes, operators want levers that redirect demand to other baskets and fulfillment methods without breaking the experience.

Omnichannel execution is one of those levers. If the store can support ship-from-store, pickup, and delivery reliably, the business can keep share of wallet even when one category’s economics shift. The Wall Street Journal’s framing that growth is coming from non-store engines strengthens the case that operational resilience will increasingly be measured by digital promise performance and conversion, not just foot traffic.

This also changes what enterprise suppliers should expect from the world’s biggest retailer and its peers. More line items will carry service-level requirements that look like logistics contracts: cutoff times, cold-chain handling rules, packaging constraints for pickup and delivery, and data-sharing expectations to support forecasting and substitution logic.

What store ops and retail IT teams should pressure-test in 2026 planning

• Backroom and staging capacity: If e-commerce is already over 23% of the Walmart U.S. mix (Retail Dive, citing the earnings release), what is the equivalent share in each region or banner you operate, and what physical square footage is allocated to pickup, delivery staging, and returns processing?
• Inventory truth metrics: How often do digital out-of-stocks trace to on-hand inaccuracies, and do current cycle count and scanning policies match the expectations created by membership and paid media, which the Wall Street Journal identified as growth drivers?
• Labor model alignment: Are store labor schedules built around shopper traffic curves or order wave curves, and are pick rates, exception rates, and substitution rates tracked with the same rigor as checkout speed?
• Retail media to supply chain handshake: If advertising is part of the growth engine (The Wall Street Journal), what is the formal process to lock inventory and fulfillment capacity before campaigns run, and who owns the go or no-go call when availability is tight?