Walmart combines physical and digital in new Neighborhood Market store

NEW YORK — Walmart continues its building boom in Northwest Arkansas, opening a Neighborhood Market store just a few miles from the chain’s headquarters in Bentonville. During the past few years, company has added new Sam’s Clubs, Supercenters, a Walmart To Go convenience store, a grocery pick up facility and nearly 10 new Neighborhood Markets to the area.   While adding another new Neighborhood Market isn’t a huge deal, but the store’s location, its layout and some of the signing elements are noteworthy.

The store is located roughly two miles from a busy supercenter adjacent to Walmart’s headquarters, suggesting the retailer is not averse to cannibalizing sales from its larger format stores in the name of overall market share gains.

The small format Neighborhood Market store is designed to appeal to convenience oriented shopper and to take that concept to a higher level the store features a fuel center with multiple pumps and a tiny convenience store with a highly edit merchandise assortment.

Inside the main store, Walmart made a notable change to the layout by breaking the gondola runs that stretch from the front of the store to the rear to create a mini-action alley that bisects the store.

There is also a small section at the front of the store in the food section where lower profile fixtures are filled with organic and gluten free products. In terms of signing, Walmart was very aggressive in promoting its omnichannel capabilities.

On virtually every endcap throughout the store and with several freestanding navigational signs Walmart called out its buy online, pick up in stores capabilities. Employees even wore bright orange shirts touting the Walmart Pick up option.