Walmart and Amazon Still Define the U.S. Retail Bar

E-Commerce

The latest NRF Top 100 Retailers list confirms a familiar but important operating reality: Walmart remains the largest U.S. retailer by 2025 retail sales at 75.99 billion, while Amazon.com ranks second at 93.85 billion. Amazon grew U.S. retail sales 7.30% year over year, faster than Walmart’s 4.20%, but Walmart still holds a much larger retail-sales base.

For sellers and marketplace operators, the point is not just which company is ranked first. It is that the two largest U.S. retail engines continue to reward different forms of operational discipline. Walmart’s lead reinforces the value of store-linked fulfillment, broad household demand, and everyday-price trust. Amazon’s faster growth reinforces the value of search visibility, conversion readiness, marketplace inventory depth, and advertising execution.

That combination should shape the July operating checklist. Sellers should not treat Amazon and Walmart as interchangeable channels. Amazon listings need tight retail-readiness work: clean titles, reliable availability, competitive delivery promises, conversion-focused content, and careful ad pacing after major promotional events. Walmart and other retail marketplaces need more attention to assortment fit, price consistency, pickup and delivery expectations, and the ability to stay in stock on staple categories.

NRF’s accompanying analysis also notes that the top two spots have been unchanged since 2019 and that the top 20 showed unusual stability this year. Stability at the top does not mean the market is easy. It means smaller operators have to win in the places the giants expose: faster catalog fixes, cleaner replenishment, sharper margin controls, and better channel-specific merchandising.

The practical takeaway is simple: build a two-lane marketplace plan. Use Amazon for demand capture and rapid testing, use Walmart and adjacent retail channels for broader household reach, and measure each channel by its own economics instead of forcing one playbook across both.

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