I see that Amazon is experimenting with grocery delivery. Meanwhile, Walmart has been making noises lately about expanding its online presence. I have a feeling that the two may wind up in a full-scale price war.
If that happens, who do you think will win? And regardless of who you think will win, who do you want to win?
I want Walmart to win, and I think they have a pretty good chance. Amazon does have a couple of advantages–lower costs, plus they’ve been able to essentially co-opt UPS, etc., rather than building out more infrastructure.
Walmart also has advantages–they’re bigger in every way. More importantly, and what I think would tip the scales, is that Walmart is better at logistics than any other company in the world. They already offer free shipping on several website items–they send the item to one of their stores, and you pick it up there. I’ve taken advantage of that a few times–it’s more convenient in the sense that you can choose when to get the item.
Walmart doesn’t have a prayer in hell. Their logistics system is all setup around shipping pallettes and entire boxes of stuff around, not picking and packing individual items. And even if they did have decent logistics with regards to Home delivery, the Walmart management isn’t even close to as capable as Amazon. It’s entirely possible that grocery and other high weight/high perishibility delivery is always going to be a niche thing outside of certain urban areas, so in that sense they could both lose, but I don’t see any possible way walmart could win. Far more likely that Walmart keeps underinvesting in their stores and employee hours and ends up with stores that look like Kmart (or Ames, if you remember them), and never replaces that with online revenue at all.
Hell if you’ve ever used ship to store (which could be an advantage), you’ll often see that either A) you have to wait 50 years for an employee to get your stuff, or B) your nice brand new TV is sitting on a palette in the middle of the floor unsecured in the very back of the store. If they were serious about online they would have repurposed something in the front of the store with an appropriate amount of storage and have dedicated employees at least during peak times.
So does Target, Best Buy, Cabela’s, etc. It beats paying for shipping, but not Prime. I’m not a big Walmart hater for ethical reasons, but I don’t really like shopping there whereas Amazon is seamless and painless. With addon items or without Prime, it’s a little more annoying.
I think the biggest tipping point is the Amazon marketplace. Until Wal-Mart lets smaller venues directly compete with them on their own website they will never be able to offer “virtually anything” like amazon does. And Wal-Mart’s strategy has always seemed to be about crushing the smaller competition not letting them live but taking a piece of their action.
There was a time when I lived in Mississippi and every 3 months had to go to a doctor for $100 or more and have blood work done for another $100.00 and then pay $8.00 per day for my diabetes medicine, being in the preexisting uninsurable category. It was cheaper to fly to Panama where I had friends and see a doctor there for $32.00 and do the blood work for $16.00 and buy my meds and fly home. Until one day Walmart came up with their $4.00 per month prescription plans. WalMart has been my hero every since. Does Amazon sell prescription medicines?
No, but that just means that they don’t compete in that marketplace. Unless Walmart wants to survive as a drugstore (which they couldn’t without all their other sales subsidizing the prescription drug branch) it’s not going to be a major factor.
I think for Walmart, the prescription drug business is a good way to get people through the doors. Once they’re in the store, they will often buy other stuff. I think this is what the new, larger Walgreen’s and CVS stores are doing as well. Meanwhile Amazon doesn’t need to get people in the door and so prescription drugs aren’t a big deal for them.
I don’t want either one to win either, and have been using both, I happen to like both as well. Lately, been using Walmart more for my on-line purchases, and they always thus far have got them here much faster than they promised. Amazon never has disappointed either. Use e-bay a lot too, and for the most part, you still don’t have to pay sales tax there. Amazon a few years ago starting having to collect sales tax I believe for most purchases IIRC, and of course Walmart has to. The last few years, doing much more on-line purchases.
I read somewhere back, that there hasn’t been a new mall built in America for a number of years, and that eventually they will pretty much fade out altogether with on-line purchases taking up the bulk of it.
I would dispute this. Amazon works feverishly to save a minute (or less) on completing an order, and they’re willing to try anything. I was reading earlier this year on an idea they had to start shipping an order before you placed it, based upon the number of times you looked at an item, or something like that.
My own experience makes me believe the opposite. Since I have dropped Prime, anytime I have an order that qualifies for free shipping, they sit on it for at least a week (8 days, on average based on my last 6 months of activity). If I order something without free shipping, it ships in about 2 days.
They aren’t sitting on your super saver shipping orders (except maybe during the holidays). They are optimizing for lowest shipping cost, which involves any one of ship it right now from the closest warehouse, ship it via amazon’s own truck between warehouses to a closer one, or wait to ship for an already scheduled restock of a close warehouse. If you have prime you get to see some how many different warehouses they have to ship from to complete an order in two days - with super saver they ship it around internally before dumping it to where you see it, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t start the process of moving stuff internally right away.
I live in a small town, and WalMart is the only game in town as far as local shopping for a number of things.
I have had a longstanding love affair with Amazon, and the fact that they are now offering grocery-type items makes me very happy - while I can get lots of wonderful fresh food here right from the grower, I love the idea of getting toiletries and non-perishable staples delivered right to my door from Amazon Pantry. I just put in my first order with them last night, and it’ll be here tomorrow. The prices were very similar to what I am used to paying in this area. And I don’t have to spend time driving to the store, picking it all out, waiting in line to check out, and schlepping that stuff home.
Any time I can avoid shopping at WalMart is a plus as far as I am concerned. I really don’t like how they have a lot of their suppliers bent over to please them - while the price might be to their suits’ liking, the quality has to suffer.
Ship to store eliminates the worry that some items require a signature. My former downstairs neighbor had a “finders, keepers” attitude about packages and mail.
So either it requires a signature when I’m not home and the driver doesn’t leave it three days in a row and I have to go to the UPS facility to pick it up. They close at 5:00 and I work 'til 6:00. The WalMart near my home is open 24 hours.
Or the neighbor lady helps herself and I have to deal with that mishegas.
I don’t have a preference or a sense of Amazon vs. WalMart but Omar Little asked a question I felt I could answer.
As the owner of a brick & mortar store in a shrinking industry I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that.
I have never had anything delivered by Amazon, and that probably includes several hundred items over 10 years, and never had anything that required a signature. UPS drops on the front porch, rings the bell and leaves.
Now you make a good point if you have neighbors pilfering the boxes left on your doorstep. But that would normally be solved with one conversation where I live. YMMV.
Amazon is way ahead of Walmart with respect to e-commerce logistics in the distribution center. Amazon’s DC’s are pure e-com, Walmart’s support retail operations which requires a very different type of optimization (they only have 3 e-com DC’s).
However, if Walmart can efficiently ramp up “ship from store”, then they could gain an advantage over Amazon which has no stores (and is trying to build DC’s close to every populated area for rapid delivery).
