Walmart had enough capital to compete fifteen years ago too, and they chose not to seriously compete then as they are now. Walmart is a perfect example of the

Walmart had enough capital to compete fifteen years ago too, and they chose not to seriously compete then as they are now. Walmart is a perfect example of the difficulty of a business not disrupting itself. They could have caught up perhaps five years ago, but not now. Here's the thing: the family still controls it. They are billionaires many times over. To seriously compete with AMZN would take many billions a year, many years in a row, and frankly, you need a guy like Bezos who just doesn't care about anything besides winning. Walmart has had nothing of the sort and the focus on their physical store base was a major distraction during the time they could have caught up. There's obviously TONS of tech involved in AMZN's retail operations, and WMT will simply never be able to hire as many or the same caliber as AMZN can (despite AMZN's poor employer reputation) Not to mention the fact that their CEOs are concerned about the stock price a few years from now from their RSUs or stock options, and massive e-commerce investments would certainly drive EPS and/or the dividend down which is basically how Walmart is valued in the public market. The culture, just everything is different and superior at AMZN. My impression of Walmart is forever tainted by the few recent store experiences I've had. They have no idea where or if inventory is in the store and no one wants to help you find it if so. The last few Walmarts I've been to have had rusty shopping carts that barely roll. And that was in Palo Alto, which has to have much higher incomes than average. Amazon now has the advantage that the freight train that is FBA has started rolling and just won't stop for a very long time. AWS operating income and FBA fees subsidize their own retail gross margins, which would make it even hard for WMT to compete. And good luck getting your marketplace partners to deliver as on-time and reliably as AMZN already has gotten theirs to. Walmart has mid single-digit operating profit margins (profit before taxes and interest). That makes every 1% price reduction (if they were to seriously compete on price) reduce their profit by 15-20%!