Executive Overview
We are the largest discount retailer in the United States by number of stores, with 17,683 stores located in 46 states as of July 30, 2021, with the greatest concentration of stores in the southern, southwestern, midwestern and eastern United States. We offer a broad selection of merchandise, including consumable products such as food, paper and cleaning products, health and beauty products and pet supplies, and non-consumable products such as seasonal merchandise, home decor and domestics, and basic apparel. Our merchandise includes national brands from leading manufacturers, as well as our own private brand selections with prices at substantial discounts to national brands. We offer our customers these national brand and private brand products at everyday low prices (typically $10 or less) in our convenient small-box locations.
We believe our convenient store formats, locations, and broad selection of high-quality products at compelling values have driven our substantial growth and financial success over the years and through a variety of economic cycles. We are mindful that the majority of our customers are value-conscious, and many have low and/or fixed incomes. As a result, we are intensely focused on helping our customers make the most of their spending dollars. Our core customers are often among the first to be affected by negative or uncertain economic conditions and among the last to feel the effects of improving economic conditions, particularly when trends are inconsistent and of an uncertain duration. The primary macroeconomic factors that affect our core customers include the unemployment and underemployment rates, wage growth, changes in U.S. and global trade policy, and changes to certain government assistance programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, unemployment benefits, economic stimulus payments, and the child tax credit. In 2020 and the first half of 2021, our customers experienced impacts from many of these factors, as detailed above under “Impact of COVID-19”. We are monitoring the potential impact of changes to SNAP benefits and unemployment benefit programs, as well as the monthly payments of the child tax credit, all of which may impact our customers during the second half of 2021. Additionally, our customers are impacted by increases in those expenses that generally comprise a large portion of their household budgets, such as rent, healthcare, and fuel prices; as well as cost inflation in frequently purchased household products. Finally, significant unseasonable or unusual weather patterns can impact customer shopping behaviors.
We remain committed to our long-term operating priorities as we consistently strive to improve our performance while retaining our customer-centric focus. These priorities include: 1) driving profitable sales growth, 2) capturing growth opportunities, 3) enhancing our position as a low-cost operator, and 4) investing in our diverse teams through development, empowerment and inclusion.
We seek to drive profitable sales growth through initiatives aimed at increasing customer traffic and average transaction amount. As we work to provide everyday low prices and meet our customers’ affordability needs, we remain focused on enhancing our margins through effective category management, inventory shrink reduction initiatives, private brands penetration, distribution and transportation efficiencies, global sourcing, and pricing and markdown optimization. Several of our strategic and other sales-driving initiatives are also designed to capture growth opportunities and are discussed in more detail below.
Historically, our sales in our consumables category, which tend to have lower gross margins, have been the key drivers of net sales and customer traffic, while sales in our non-consumables categories, which tend to have higher gross margins, have contributed to more profitable sales growth and an increase in average transaction amount. Prior to 2020, our sales mix had continued to shift toward consumables, and, within consumables, toward lower margin departments such as perishables. This trend did not occur in 2020 or the first quarter of 2021 (as discussed above under “Impact of COVID-19”), though we did begin to see some reversion toward the prior mix trends beginning in the second quarter of 2021. We continue to expect some sales mix challenges to persist, and we expect the mix trend reversion toward consumables will continue. Several of our initiatives, including certain of those discussed below, are intended to address these mix challenges; however, there can be no assurances that these efforts will be successful.
We continue to make progress on and invest in certain strategic initiatives that we believe will help drive profitable sales growth, both with new and existing customers, and capture long-term growth opportunities. Such opportunities include leveraging existing and developing new digital tools and technology to provide our customers with additional shopping access points and even greater convenience. This technology includes our Dollar General app, which contains a variety of tools to enhance the in-store shopping experience. Additionally, DG Pickup, which is a buy online, pickup in-store initiative, is now available in more than 17,000 stores across the chain. Further, our non-consumables initiative, which offers a new, differentiated and limited assortment that will change throughout the year, is contributing