What: Walmart, Ulta Beauty and Amazon are each expanding their wellness offers in the U.S., a market where consumers spend more than $500 billion a year on wellness.

Why it is important: Amazon's AI-led storefronts build larger baskets by linking needs across health, beauty and wellness, which pushes physical retailers to answer with solution-based merchandising rather than separate category aisles.

Americans spend more than $500 billion a year on wellness, according to McKinsey, and 84% of U.S. consumers say it is a top or important priority. Retailers are responding by merging supplements, medications, fitness, grooming and beauty into one proposition, since shoppers buy wellness by solution rather than by category.

Amazon builds specialised digital storefronts around the outcomes shoppers want to achieve, which lets it link items such as weights or supplements to a search for healthy ageing. Its Alexa for Shopping assistant combines Rufus and Alexa+ and can compare items, review past orders and buy from other retailers through Buy for Me.

Walmart relies on its roughly 4,600 pharmacists to connect wellness and beauty, notably for the launch of La Roche-Posay, backed by L'Oréal training programmes. It staged a Wellness Day in July and is introducing Wellness Minis, priced from $2, in about 2,000 stores and online.

Ulta Beauty made wellness its first new merchandise category in over three decades. Its 500-square-foot Wellness by Ulta Beauty boutiques, piloted in four stores, carry 58 brands and dedicated advisors. Eight in 10 of its 47 million rewards members view wellness holistically.

IADS Notes:  The article's U.S. examples have counterparts among department stores moving toward goal-led wellness offers. John Lewis is rolling out Sports & Wellness departments of around 5,000 sq ft in four stores, organised around activities such as running and training rather than product categories, with gait analysis, AI-powered fitness mirrors and run clubs (John Lewis press release, August 2026), which mirrors the solution-based merchandising described at Walmart and Ulta. Harvey Nichols went further by dedicating its entire Knightsbridge fourth floor to Pilates, aesthetic and therapeutic clinics and functional nutrition (WWD, May 2026). Staff expertise is the other common thread. John Lewis is more than doubling Randox Health's in-store clinics offering blood testing and wellness assessments, on the premise that advisory services cannot be replicated online (Drapers, September 2026), while M&S is bringing Sephora's specialist beauty advisors into 100 UK stores from spring 2027 rather than building the offer alone (Retail Week, September 2026). In beauty, Shinsegae is entering the U.S. market against Sephora, Ulta and Olive Young by competing on early discovery and curation rather than scale (WWD, September 2026).

How Walmart, Ulta Beauty and Amazon are growing in U.S. wellness