Walmart is one of the most customer-centric companies around, and all smart suppliers know not only their customers, but also their Walmart customers.
Kantar Retail conducted a survey of 4,000 shoppers and came up with a persona for the average Walmart shopper, according to a new report from Business Insider. She’s a 50 year old white woman with a household income of about $53,000 dollars.
But we all know that “average Walmart shopper” doesn’t mean “every Walmart shopper.”
Kantar actually found that more than one quarter of shoppers with household incomes under $25,000 and one quarter of shoppers with household incomes of $25,000 to $50,000 shopped at Walmart, while fewer than 20% of those earning $50,000 to $75,000 did. Add in the more affluent shoppers and find the mean, though, and you’ll come up with that $53,000 household income for the “average” Walmart shopper.
How about the age? In spite of recent reports that Millennials love Walmart, Kantar found that younger shoppers were more likely to shop at Target than at Walmart. The trend reversed in the 45-54 age range, and almost all shoppers 65 and older in the survey shopped at Walmart.
Is the average Walmart shopper a woman? Yes, because over 70% of all the shoppers were female. And since more than 60% of the shoppers surveyed were white, it’s no surprise that more than half of shoppers at all the stores were white. This may say something about shoppers or it may say something about the survey, but it doesn’t say much about Walmart.
What do you do with this “average” information, then?
- Don’t ignore it. Marketing to Millennials may be on-trend, but Walmart shoppers, like the overall global population, are aging. 85% of all household purchasing decisions are made by women. Female Baby Boomers as a group control $19 trillion dollars and spend more than twice as much as the rest of the population. Keep that 50 year old woman in mind when you market.
- Look at your own data. Retail Link provides the real data for your own products, and the Store of the Community reports give you better demographic insights into any given community or store. The average Walmart shopper as described above isn’t your average shopper if your product is diapers, and she might not be your consumer if you’re selling beer, either.
