Retail Recon: Gourmet Cookies on Walmart.com

Gourmet cookies are a niche, high-sales-opportunity product inside the vast Cookies category on Walmart.com. While search volumes for "gourmet cookies" are much higher on Amazon, we're going to look at why Walmart is an increasingly interesting place to connect with new customers.

This Retail Recon will cover sales trends, what it takes to win and how the Walmart.com customer shops for gourmet cookies. 

Discoverability on Walmart vs. Amazon

Walmart shoppers are less inclined to search for ‘gourmet’ on the platform, compared to Amazon.  While "cookies" actually garners slightly larger total Walmart search volume, the longer tail "gourmet cookies" is searched for 10 times more often on Amazon than Walmart.  The two sites rack up similar search numbers for more ingredient- and flavor-specific terms, such as "chocolate," "butter," and "wafer."

Walmart shoppers are also far less likely to go shopping by brand compared to Amazon.  Higher priced options like Tates and Biscoff see fewer searches on the platform as users are more likely to shop by characteristic than brand. 

Competition on Search Results Pages

Walmart prioritizes Walmart+ and brands with in-store pickup availability, so search results pages for "gourmet cookies" are dotted with familiar grocery store brands like Pepperidge Farms and Famous Amos mixed in with shipped offerings with higher price points.

Once you move into higher volume characteristic-based searches such "chocolate cookies," "wafer cookies," and "butter cookies," most of the top search results are Walmart+ and Pickup eligible. Low-priced grocery store and private label brands secure the top spots.

A Closer Look Top Gourmet Cookie Performers

Biscoff

Biscoff's top performing SKUs are all eligible for Walmart+ and have at least 100 reviews with a high 4.7 star rating.  However, Biscoff's listing content is inconsistent even among these top offerings.  Some of their newest listings have only one picture, even as they’re paying for sponsored placement on search results pages.  Their established listings boast mostly packaging angles and little else.

LU

This European gourmet cookie brand has only one listing that is eligible for Walmart+. It's also the only listing with optimized content and competitive review volume.  All other listings are completely lacking in content and many are controlled by resellers.

These factors make LU cookies practically undiscoverable when searching by characteristic or taste.

Tate's Bake Shop

Tate's Bake Shop is a 1P vendor on Walmart with a deep bench of Walmart+-eligible listings in various flavors and counts, making them extremely discoverable on the platform in searches by characteristic.  

A search of "Tates Cookies" provides a results page that's almost exclusively brand offers, nearly all of them Walmart+.

Pricing and Pack Counts on Walmart

Across the 35 top-selling SKUs we found that the vast majority of available items are described as “Single Packs.”  Walmart’s titling and listing structure can be limited and unsophisticated compared to Amazon’s options for building more dynamic listings.  While this makes it slightly more difficult to categorize, we can look at the pricing buckets to better understand the breakdown.

By breaking down these top performing SKUs by price range, we see that much of the monthly revenue is captured by the 18 SKUs priced under $20.

While the lower-priced offers are enticing to shoppers, the larger pack sizes can mean better profitability.  Often, a smart strategy in this category should include offering up multiple pack sizes.

Key Takeaways for Gourmet Cookies on Walmart.com

• Developing content that tells a taste and characteristic story can help win the sale in this category where brand identification may not be as important to the Walmart shopper as product attribute, offering, or price.
  
  
• As shoppers change their patterns to adapt to inflation, price-conscious retailers like Walmart are gaining share across categories like gourmet cookies.  This makes it a smart place to focus growth goals and discovery.  
  
  
• The gourmet cookie listings on Walmart.com are consistently underdeveloped across even top performing offerings.
  
  
• Optimizing pack counts for eCommerce and a first party relationship with Walmart are crucial factors for creating profitability on Walmart.com.
  
  

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