I think one of the problems facing specifically Walmart is that their multi-decade long negative sentiment at the corporate and personal lives of the executives

I think one of the problems facing specifically Walmart is that their multi-decade long negative sentiment at the corporate and personal lives of the executives among social progressives that are strong among the "millennial" demographic in the US undermines a lot of the innovation that the company does. Thus, if I were in Walmart's position, I would be spinning out separate companies potentially rather than even doing M&A to try to capture the market because I'm not sure if jet.com is really going to undo the damage. About a decade ago when I was at HP one of the senior executives in the personal computing group was talking about how he demoed a touchscreen computer and people were pretty impressed and asking when it's going to be out and he was disappointed that nobody knew that HP had already released it. Combined with a completely unfocused company direction, anemic marketing budget, and continued obsession with trying to squeeze more money out of legacy markets (like most traditional enterprises TBQH) HP's reputation as a low end commodity OEM with mediocre software in the consumer verticals has been quite solidly imprinted and little will change that perception without clear, obvious direction change to consumers. And few businesses (and more accurately, their board of directors) have the guts to do that.