Beauty, Health, and Wellness Converge as Walmart and Ulta Vie for Combined Wallet
As consumer spending habits shift towards treating beauty, health, and wellness as one budget, retailers Walmart (WMT) and Ulta (ULTA) are vying for a larger share of this combined wallet.
The line between drugstore beauty, prestige cosmetics, and wellness is blurring, with shoppers increasingly making these purchases together rather than separately.
According to data from mid-September 2026, the convergence of these categories has redrew the competitive map for Walmart and Ulta, leading them to adapt their strategies to capture more of this spending.
Walmart is moving beauty products into higher-traffic areas of its stores and relying on pharmacists and trained associates to guide purchases, while Ulta has opened wellness boutiques stocked with supplements and skin and hair serums.