Before we dive into the details of Walmart’s target market, let’s go over what exactly a target market is.
Simply put, a target market is the demographic of consumers at which a particular company chooses to aim its marketing and advertising campaigns. Target markets are chosen based on the compatibility between what a company is selling and what consumers are looking to spend their money on.
You might also hear the term “target audience” thrown around in a similar context, but these two terms mean slightly different things. A target audience is typically a more specific slice of a company’s target market.
In a broad sense, you could say that Walmart’s target market is extremely wide. They market to, well, just about anyone. After all, they sell an impressively wide range of goods and services, with the bulk of their revenue each year coming from grocery sales. Grocery retailers tend to have larger target markets than more niche businesses for obvious reasons. (Everybody has to eat, right?)
But when we dig a little deeper into the data on who actually shops at Walmart, a more specific picture begins to form…
According to data gathered by Numerator, a market intelligence firm based in Chicago, the average Walmart shopper is a college-educated white woman between the ages of 55 and 64. These customers hail predominantly from suburban areas, particularly in the southeast United States, and earn about $80,000 per year.
With all this said, you could say that Walmart’s target market is made up of adults with steady incomes who regularly purchase groceries, while their target audience is specifically middle-aged suburban women who earn generous middle-class incomes.
In addition, here is an interesting statistic – the average Walmart customer spends about $54 per trip, making 63 annual visits. This amounts to about $3,400 spent annually at Walmart by the retailer’s average customer.
Walmart Customer Demographics
Even though we’ve already gone over a few of the details of Walmart’s target market and target audience, we’re going to break things down a little further.
In the following section, we’ll look at everything from age to gender to finances to find out exactly what kind of consumer is most likely to shop at Walmart.
Average Age Of Walmart Consumers
According to the same Numerator data we mentioned earlier, Walmart consumers tend to be between the ages of 55 and 64, with the average age landing at about 59 years old.
Some sources have noted that since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and as online sales continue to be a larger and larger driver of Walmart’s business, the age range of Walmart consumers could be skewing downward slightly. Older folks might not be shopping at Walmart less, but it seems at least somewhat likely that younger people are starting to shop at Walmart a little more.
Walmart Gender Demographics
Overall, the majority of Walmart’s customers are women. Interestingly, women are also notably more likely to be employed at Walmart, with 55% of the company’s employees identifying as women in 2022.
Walmart Racial Demographics
According to FinancesOnline.com, 70% of Walmart shoppers are white, while only 12% are black and 11% are Latino.
Annual Income Of Walmart Consumers
Here, things get a bit confusing. In a 2022 Business Insider article published by Dominick Reuter and referencing analytics from Numerator, the average Walmart shopper is cited as earning about $80,000 per year. However, Finances Online published conflicting information stating that the average Walmart consumer in 2021/2022 earns between $25k and $50k per year. (The majority of sources cite the higher number.)
Walmart Consumer Behavior
When it comes to consumer behavior, Walmart shoppers tend to visit at least once per week, if not twice or more. Throughout the year, the average shopper visits a Walmart retail location about 63 times.
On each visit, the average shopper spends about $54, totaling over $3000 throughout the year.
The majority of products purchased by Walmart consumers are grocery items.
Walmart’s Competitors In The Market
Now that we’ve taken a look at Walmart’s target market, it’s worth considering where they stand with their competitors. Are Walmart, Target, and Amazon all competing for the same audience?
Let’s find out…
Amazon
Amazon is undoubtedly Walmart’s biggest competitor, so it would be easy to assume that their target markets are pretty similar.
But interestingly, Amazon’s target market actually looks a bit different than you might expect. Popular with so-called “bridge millennials,” Amazon is most popular with consumers between the ages of 33 and 42. This age group is particularly likely to subscribe to Amazon’s popular Amazon Prime subscription service, which earns the company the bulk of its revenue each year.
Amazon’s customers are also split evenly between genders, with no gender demographic reigning supreme over another.
The largest proportion of Amazon consumers (39.5%) earn over $100,000 per year, making Amazon most appealing to those with upper-class incomes when compared to Walmart and Target.
The average Amazon Prime subscriber spends about $1,400 per year on Amazon purchases.
Target
Walmart and Target have quite a few things in common when it comes to their target audience, but there are also some important differences.
Like Walmart, Target’s average consumer is also white and female. However, Target’s average customer tends to earn around $65,000 per year, ranging up to $80k. Target also markets itself to a somewhat younger audience, primarily succeeding with consumers between the ages of 18 and 44.
Target customers also tend to spend slightly less per visit and visit fewer times throughout the year, spending about $1000 a year on average.
