Dive Brief:
- Wal-Mart is killing off its Express format and will move the 21 existing Express stores under the company's Neighborhood Market brand.
- Both Express and Neighborhood Markets are considerably smaller than the traditional Wal-Mart store, but Express stores were just half the size of Neighborhood Markets.
- The announcement comes less than three months after the nation's largest retailer announced it would open 300 small-format stores — both Express and Neighborhood Markets — in the next year.
Dive Insight:
The differences between Express and Neighborhood Markets was never quite clear, besides their size. The two brands carried a similar mix of products. And as it turns out, consumers used both stores the same way — for buying last-minute meals, filling prescriptions, and "fill-in" groceries.
Most interestingly, Walmart did not make any announcement about the fate of its experiment to build a convenience-store-sized Wal-Mart, which would be even smaller than Express stores.