For the food and staples retailing industry, we can see that the top three in the world for total inventory are the United States, France and Japan. The United States has the largest inventory, nearly four times greater than France's.

For the pharmaceutical industry, we can see that the top three in the world for total inventory are the United States, China and Japan. United States still has the largest inventory in this industry.

Next, we use these two industries to analyze total global inventories. We can see that the U.S. has the highest total inventory.

Through the bar chart, we can clearly see that the United States’ total inventory in these two industries is much higher than other countries and accounts for an important part of the world.

In the United States, pharmaceuticals have higher SG&A costs than food and staple retailing, and their median return on assets and median return on investment are negative. In addition, median inventory turnover for food and staples retailing are about three times higher than for pharmaceuticals.

In China, the SG&A cost, ROA and ROI of pharmaceuticals are relatively high. In terms of inventory turnover, pharmaceuticals are on par with the United States, but retail sales of food and daily necessities are only 4.75, far lower than the United States.

Overall, the food& staples retailing industry and the pharmaceutical industry exhibit similar performance in inventory management. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industry generally has a lower ratio of inventory to total assets compared to the food& staples retailing industry, reflecting industry characteristics such as potentially higher asset turnover rates and stricter inventory control standards in the pharmaceutical sector.

The inventory days in the pharmaceutical industry in the United States are higher than in China. However, the inventory days for the food and staples retailing industry in China are higher than in the United States.

As can be seen from the figure, the asset turnover rate (Median Asset Turnover) of China's food& staples retailing industry has continued at a high level since 2016, while the United States shows a lower asset turnover rate in this regard. For the pharmaceuticals, China's turnover rate is lower than that of the United States, which may indicate that U.S. pharmaceutical companies perform better in terms of asset utilization efficiency. In addition, trends in Median Return on Assets show that the performance of the U.S. food& staples retailing has declined since 2018, while the pharmaceuticals has been relatively stable over the past few years.

This scatter plot illustrates the relationship between inventory turnover and gross margin across different companies. In the automobile industry, there is a slight positive correlation between inventory turnover and gross margin, although this correlation is not strong. On the other hand, data points in the food and staples retailing industry are primarily distributed along a horizontal line, indicating that inventory turnover has almost no significant impact on gross margin. This suggests that in the automobile industry, inventory management has a certain positive effect on profitability, whereas in the food and staples retailing industry, the effect is not as pronounced.

The chart illustrates the relationship between operating margin and inventory turnover for different companies, particularly highlighting the automobile and food & staples retailing industries. The trend line for the automobile industry shows a slight positive slope but with an R-squared value of -0.06, indicating that there is virtually no correlation or a very weak relationship between inventory turnover and operating margin within this industry. In contrast, the trend line for the food and staples retailing industry has a steeper slope with an R-squared value of 0.09, suggesting a slight positive correlation between inventory turnover and operating margin in this sector.

The scatter plot shows the relationship between free cash flow and inventory turnover for various companies. The plot indicates that the free cash flow for both industries is concentrated around zero, with inventory turnovers below 10. The trend line suggests a slight negative correlation between inventory turnover and free cash flow, but the correlation is weak. This implies that an increase in inventory turnover does not necessarily correspond with an increase in free cash flow. There is no significant difference between the two industries in terms of the relationship between free cash flow and inventory turnover.

Walmart is bigger than Costco in all dimensions.

Walmart is much better than Costco in asset turnover days, inventory days, cash conversion cycle and SG&A cost. However, both Walmart and Costco have the similar in receivable days/ payable days.

Firstly, we observe that Costco consistently has lower inventory days than Walmart, indicating more efficient inventory management at Costco. In terms of the cash conversion cycle, Costco experienced negative values in 2017 and 2019. Regarding labor productivity, Walmart has shown steady performance since 2016, while Costco has displayed a downward trend beginning in 2018. Lastly, the ratio of payable days to receivable days has been declining for Walmart in recent years; for Costco, this ratio has fluctuated but began to stabilize starting in 2020. 

In the U.S., COG expenses for food and staple retail average about 79% and SG&A expenses about 11%. Costco's COG is higher and SG&A is lower, indicating that Costco's costs may be lower. Walmart, on the other hand, has lower COG and higher SG&A.

The average inventory of the food & staples retailing industry in the United States is approximately 35%. Both Walmart and Costco are much higher than those in the United States, and Costco even has about twice as much inventory as the average.