There are many reasons that Walmart achieved a $1 trillion market valuation last month, a first for a traditional retailer, but one is surely the generally positive way the Walmart brand is perceived by consumers. According to research and analytics firm YouGov, Walmart has steadily improved its brand value — based on aggregated scores measuring impression, quality, value, satisfaction, likelihood to recommend and reputation — over the past five years.
Walmart should be well-positioned to take advantage of the current wave of value-seeking consumers, but it faces strong rivals in the low-price sector that are fighting to attract these same shoppers. YouGov benchmarked Walmart against a custom “reference retail sector” of U.S. retail chains with $30 billion in revenue, a national footprint across 35+ states, at least 20% grocery exposure and 80% awareness on the YouGov BrandIndex. This custom sector is composed of Aldi, Costco, Dollar General, Kroger and Target.
Walmart Outperforms Competing Retailers on Value and Overall Satisfaction
Walmart was already a formidable competitor, and the YouGov survey indicates that it has been gaining strength in key areas since the beginning of the decade. Five years ago, Walmart’s Index score was in the low 20s (the Index score, based on daily surveys of U.S. adults, is reported as net scores ranging from -100 to +100), but it stood at 28.6 in February 2026, according to an article by YouGov Content Manager Rishad Dsouza. In contrast, the reference retail sector saw modest downward movement over the same period, currently sitting at 23.7 — meaning Walmart turned what had been a five-point deficit into a lead over its industry peers.
As might be expected, value remains Walmart’s touchstone with consumers: its value ranking of 39.8 is higher than the reference retail sector’s 26.8 score, and Walmart value perceptions have even edged up in recent years. Walmart’s quality score stands at 20.1, just below the reference sector’s 21.2, but Walmart has been able to improve its quality scores over the past five years, while the sector as a whole has seen more limited growth.
Walmart’s increased appeal also is seen in the brand’s consideration metric, which rose more than eight points, to 63.8, over the past five years, compared to a 2.4-point uptick to 36 for the reference group as a whole. Overall satisfaction scores for Walmart also have risen over the past five years, from the mid-30s to 42.3, while the reference retail group declined 1.9 points during the same period, currently registering at 28.
Walmart Enhances Fashion to Compete for Higher-Earning Customers
“In the retail industry, with its tense competition and slim margins, even just maintaining brand health can be counted as success,” wrote Dsouza. “But Walmart has been able to steadily grow in key brand performance measures over time.”
One of Walmart’s key strategic wins has come by increasing its share of customer households with incomes of $100,000 or more, a sign that the retailer is broadening its appeal beyond value.
For example, Walmart has been enhancing its fashion offerings, according to EVP of Fashion Denise Incandela, who spoke at this year’s NRF Big Show in January. “We realized we were not supporting our customers’ closets, just the bottom of the closet,” she said. “That was a big ‘a-ha’ for us, because we have all these people (145 million weekly) in our stores because of the groceries and consumables Walmart sells, but we weren’t serving our growth customers — the more urban millennials and Gen Z.
“Walmart fashion had mostly been in the socks and underwear business,” Incandela added. “We were winning on price, but we weren’t winning on quality, aesthetic and style.”
Another key strategic move for Walmart has been its evolution from a legacy retailer into a technology leader, marked by its switch from the New York Stock Exchange to the tech-heavy Nasdaq in December 2025. In addition to steady growth in ecommerce, Walmart was one of the first major retailers to integrate with ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout, and in November 2025 Walmart unveiled AI-powered tools on its app and website to enhance the holiday shopping experience.
Target Tries for Turnaround
Target, like Walmart, is beginning 2026 with a new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who has laid out four key priorities: leading with merchandising authority; elevating the guest experience; accelerating technology to remove friction; and strengthening Target teams and communities. And Fiddelke is putting his (or rather Target’s) money where his mouth is: the big-box retailer plans to add $2 billion to its 2026 operating and capital expenditures budgets, spending the funds on a chainwide refresh of the store experience as well as new tech and supply chain investments.
But Target also faces a number of challenges, including four consecutive quarters of declining customer traffic. Net sales for Target’s FY 2025, which ended Jan. 31, 2026, were $104.8 billion, a 1.7% decrease from FY 2025’s $106.6 billion. To reverse its fortunes, Target is using a combination of high-profile marketing campaigns — like its design partnership with Time for the publication’s key 2026 events — with more basic blocking and tackling, including beefing up its beauty assortment in anticipation of the August 2026 ending of its shop-in-shop deal with Ulta Beauty.
Target also has doubled down on the wellness trend, expanding its assortment in this category by 30% and adding new wellness-focused in-store and digital experiences. And Target will expand its partnership with Levi’s to more than 1,000 stores. The retailer also has been trying to boost its design cred, for example with the remodel of its store in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood.
But Target remains well aware of the importance of price to today’s consumer: the retailer lowered prices on 3,000 essential items in November 2025 at a time when SNAP benefits were in jeopardy, and recently issued price drops on a further 3,000 items to drive home its value proposition. The retailer needs to find the right balance: offering a compelling value message while also making its stores a more fun, rewarding place to shop.
Dollar General Seeks to Make In-Store Shopping More Inviting
Like Target, Dollar General is trying to enhance its shopping experience and assortment. It’s also seeking additional revenue streams like its retail media network, which boasts more than 100 million marketable customer profiles and generated $170 million in retail media network volume last year.
The retailer also is working to alter the perception of its stores as crowded and confusing, and will test a more “open and inviting” store format this year. And Dollar General plans to “launch at least 15 new brands in nonconsumable categories in 2026,” said CEO Todd Vasos during a conference call discussing the retailer’s FY 2025 results.
“Our goal is to increase nonconsumable sales penetration to as high as 20% by 2029,” Vasos added. “This would represent meaningful gross margin expansion and is an important component of our long-term financial framework.”
Dollar General also has carved out a niche as a rural-oriented retailer, both with its store locations and its delivery services. Approximately 75% of the U.S. population currently lives within five miles of a Dollar General store, and in January 2026 Dollar General reported that it offered delivery services from more than 17,000 stores
