Data & Insights

Replacing Syndicated Data with Charter Data

Losing IRI, SPINS, or Circana coverage leaves a hole in your Walmart category story and most suppliers only feel it in the next line review, when they walk in with their own sales and nothing else. Charter fills that gap with better data than syndicated ever provided at Walmart. This page covers what Charter actually replaces, what it doesn't, and where OCM comes in.

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Updated: August 2026

Why Suppliers End Up Here

Some suppliers are replacing syndicated coverage. Others never had it and are hitting the point where their own sales aren't enough to hold a line review.

Without category data, your story is limited to your own sales, and the buyer controls the rest of the narrative.

Delistings happen when a merchant only sees raw performance. Switching, loyalty, and incrementality are what let you challenge the call before it's made.

What Charter Data Is

Charter is the paid tier of Walmart's Data platform. It runs on Walmart first-party data, roughly 90% of US households and 5.2 billion baskets a year, which makes it the single verified source for category intelligence at Walmart. It's organized into three modules:

Shopper Behavior: the WHAT.
- Switching and substitution, loyalty and cross-shop, competitive benchmarking, basket analysis, trial and repeat.
Channel Performance: the WHERE.
- Omni-sales and omni-inventory, forecasting, replenishment, vendor scorecard.
Customer Perception: the WHY.
- Concept testing, shopper surveys, exploratory pricing, ad-hoc and qualitative research. Surveys are available as an add-on.

For suppliers replacing syndicated data, the pieces that do the most work are competitor sales analysis ($/store/week and $ per customer against named competitors over L4W and L13W), switching and nil pick data, shopper loyalty tiers, cross-shop, and Digital Landscapes for the full path to purchase.

How Charter Differs from Syndicated Data

Inside Walmart, this isn't a close comparison, and the reason is structural. Syndicated data is a projection. It reads a sample and models the rest of the market from it, which is the only way to see across retailers who don't share their transaction records. That modeling is why syndicated numbers arrive on a lag, why they're reported at a level well above the individual store, and why a merchant can question them in a line review.

Charter is a record. It reports what actually rang up at Walmart, at the item and store level, on a weekly cadence. Nobody is estimating anything, which is why the numbers hold up in a buyer conversation in a way projections don't.

Four practical differences follow from that, and they're the ones suppliers feel first:

New items become visible faster. Projections need enough volume to model reliably; a transaction record doesn't. You can read a launch in weeks rather than waiting out a reporting lag.
Store-level decisions become possible. Distribution gaps, execution failures, and store-rank mismatches only show up when the data goes down to the store.
Private brand stops being a blind spot. Retailer-owned brands are visible in Charter rather than masked or grouped.
Omni is native, not reconstructed. In-store, pickup, delivery, and dotcom are separated in the source data instead of being stitched together after the fact.

The one thing Charter doesn't do

Charter is Walmart and Sam's Club. It won't show you Kroger, Target, club, or total market. If your category reviews depend on a cross-retailer share story, that piece has to be solved separately, ...usually by keeping a narrowed syndicated subscription covering only the retailers Charter can't see, rather than renewing the whole thing. We'll help you scope that honestly.

What to Know Before You Subscribe

Charter is priced as a percentage of your Walmart retail sales and involves a multi-year commitment. Your actual rate depends on your volume and your category, so the real numbers have to come from Walmart Data Ventures directly, anything else is a guess.

What we can tell you is what to think about before that conversation:

Your cost moves with your sales. Because the fee is volume-based and set on a lag, a down year doesn't lower your bill in the same year. Build that into the business case rather than treating it as a fixed line item.
The term is longer than most software contracts. Go in expecting a multi-year commitment and plan the internal case around that horizon.
Some capabilities are priced separately. Shopper surveys and Digital Landscapes are add-ons. Decide up front whether you need them so you're comparing the right total.

The Real Risk Isn't the Cost, It's Non-Use

Charter generates an enormous volume of data. Without someone actively working inside it, most of that capability goes unrealized and the subscription becomes another login nobody opens. Buyer engagement varies too; most merchants track a handful of core metrics and won't ask you for the rest.

That's not an argument against Charter. It's an argument for treating the subscription and the analysis as two separate decisions. The suppliers who get value from Charter lead with $/store/week, then layer in shopper and competitive data to build a narrative the buyer can't contradict. That requires someone to actually build it.

How OCM Helps with Charter Data

OCM is a Walmart and Sam's Club broker, established in 1993 and based in Bentonville and Fayetteville. We help suppliers turn Charter data into decisions their merchant can act on. Depending on where you are, that means:

Before you subscribe. An honest read on whether Charter makes sense at your volume, what to expect in negotiation, and how much syndicated coverage you should keep.
Getting set up. Tier selection, user provisioning, API integration, and standing recurring pulls so the data lands where your team already works.
Ongoing analysis. Pulling the insights that matter out of the platform each period, competitive benchmarking, switching risk, loyalty tiers, trial and repeat, digital path to purchase.
Buyer-facing work. Turning that analysis into line review decks, JBP inputs, and the specific proof points that defend distribution and answer cannibalization arguments.
If you already have Charter. Most of our work starts here, with suppliers already paying for Charter who aren't getting their money's worth out of it.

Working Together

We work three ways, depending on what you already have in place.

Managed Charter support. We handle the platform, the analysis, and the merchant-facing deliverables. Best for teams without a dedicated Walmart analyst.
Alongside your team. Your analyst owns the platform; we own the category narrative and the buyer conversation. Useful when you have the capability but not the Walmart-specific fluency.
Alongside your agency. If you already have partners running brand, media, or other retailers, we take the Walmart and Sam's piece and stay out of the rest.

The starting point is a call. Bring your Walmart volume, whether you currently have Charter, and what you're losing on the syndicated side. We'll tell you plainly whether Charter is the right answer and what the work would look like.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Charter replace IRI or SPINS entirely?
- At Walmart, yes, with more granular and more current data than syndicated provided. For other retailers and total-market share, no. Most suppliers end up with Charter plus a narrowed syndicated subscription.
Can I see competitor performance in Charter?
- Yes. Competitor sales analysis covers $/store/week and $ per customer against competing brands, plus switching data showing where shoppers go when they leave you and who you're winning from. Private brand is fully visible rather than masked.
Why don't Charter numbers match my old syndicated numbers?
- They shouldn't. Syndicated data is projected from a store and household panel; Charter is Walmart's actual transaction record. Expect a one-time restatement of your baseline and document it before anyone presents off the new numbers.
What does Charter cost?
- It's priced as a percentage of your Walmart retail sales, so the number is specific to your volume and category. Walmart Data Ventures is the right source for your actual rate. We're happy to talk through what to expect going into that conversation.
Do I need to hire an analyst to run Charter?
- Not if it's managed. Charter's value depends entirely on someone working the data every period, that can be your team, ours, or both.
My syndicated access ends soon. What do I do first?
- Archive every historical extract you're still entitled to. Reporting can be rebuilt; that history can't be recovered later.

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