6 ms·

Can Wal-Mart’s Expensive New E-Commerce Operation Compete with Amazon?

22 points by miraj 9y ago

ouid 9y ago
no
- ben_jones 9y ago
  Yes. All they need to do is 1) not become perforated by fake products and 2) have quick shipping.
  - exclusiv 9y ago
    I think they may also need a strong third party marketplace. Amazon gets a lot of great inventory from third parties. Walmart could easily mine and source the best products in each category on Amazon though.
    - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
      Amazon's most serious problem is that they have fake products, and tons of third party resellers that are questionable, but those sellers are also a strenght. If they can fix 3rd party sellers to be trustworthy and legimitate, maybe by kicking out bad or fake ones, they'll win everything.
  - sudojudo 9y ago
    3) Lose the reputation of being a scummy company (or just stop being scummy). After seeing what Walmart does to small town economies, and knowing that my taxes help compensate for them not paying a livable wage, and reading about their awful lobbying, and their abusive purchase practices, and on, and on, I want nothing to do with them. Being in a rural area, I have to go well out of my way to avoid physically shopping at Walmart; avoiding them online is easy. All of that said, the vast majority of consumers don't care about ethics in business, and even if they did, Walmart has their propaganda game down pretty well at this point. They'll do fine. Oh yeah, and screw Amazon too. My last two orders have been Chinese knock-offs of the products I actually ordered. You know they're in the shitter when you need to reference a third-party website [1] to help avoid forgeries. [1] http://fakespot.com/ http://fakespot.com/
tryitnow 9y ago
Yes. I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com because: 1) I don't want the bother of trying to figure out that products are "real" and not knock-offs 2) For some items (most recently under bed storage containers) I need to know the exact dimensions and I could easily find that on Jet but not on Amazon However, I still default to Amazon for other items. So I think Wal-Mart can compete, but I seriously doubt that they will beat Amazon. Jeff Bezos is the Sam Walton of this generation of retail and I don't see anything changing that anytime soon.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  > I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com As a european I wasn't familiar with Jet.com, but color me impressed - this looks and feels like a way better shopping experience than Amazon's cluttered layout and varying seller quality. If the execution, including fast shipping and great customer support, is at Amazon-level, I'd definitely prefer shopping at jet.
dharmon 9y ago
I think jet.com was a foolish acquisition (at a foolish price), and will be written off in 5 years. Having said that, I think amazon has left a glaring gap in their armor: you cannot trust your purchases from them anymore, and more and more people are figuring it out. I have known for a few years to save my high-dollar purchases for more reputable retailers. I bought an all-clad pan from amazon that I am convinced is a factory 2nd. Now, if I want a new Le Creuset, I get it from Williams-Sonoma or Macy's or someplace I can trust. More recently, however, I realized even low-end purchases are not worth my time. I wanted to buy some frosting tips. After half an hour on Amazon, reading reviews accusing products of being shoddy knock-offs that rust, warp, etc., I realized it's much faster to just drive to a store and buy them. That's what I did, drove to Michael's and bought a set for close to the same price. I will not be renewing my Amazon Prime membership this year. There's just not enough left that I am willing to buy there to bother. This is all surprising, cause Bezos is an absolute beast. In fact, if you told me I had to compete against one of the top tech CEOs, I would pray it wasn't him (I would hope for Larry Page...). How he is missing something so big, this sowing of mistrust, I can't understand. Or it's possible I don't see the bigger game.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  I agree. The acquisition seemed more like desperation than something grounded in logic. Jet was never going to compete with Amazon so the smart play would have been to just sit back and let them burn through their runway and then buy them on the cheap.
- lotsofpulp 9y ago
  Same here, canceled my Prime and now am doing my shopping at target/staples/lowes/nordstroms/newegg Only hard part is making an account, but that only takes a few seconds and much more efficient than sorting through whatever Amazon calls it's search and filtering system.
- coffeevradar 9y ago
  I think to the extent there's a bigger game it's that Amazon wants to present to its customers a minimally curated selection of products (and sellers) that includes the full gamut of what is available in the wider world. If they are seen to offer this selection, shoppers will at least begin their product searches on Amazon. Even if many customers opt to eventually buy elsewhere, Amazon will end up with a substantial share of the purchases that result from the initial searches.
tabeth 9y ago
To this day I am still shocked Wal-Mart didn't (and still doesn't) run same day shipping of all of its items in store at prices that beat Amazon's. Not only would this crush Amazon, but would simultaneously restore Walmart's reputation as the storefront itself could be more minimalist as more of its space would be used mainly for warehousing. Seriously. Why aren't they doing this? Does it cost a few orders of magnitude higher than I'm thinking? Wal-Mart presumably has tabs on what its inventory at its own stores are (at least the website does). Wal-Mart, at its peak is pretty close to most people's houses. All they really need is a good operational workflow to reduce the amount of time wasted on inefficient deliveries.
- devoply 9y ago
  Would be trivial for Wal-Mart to do too considering the number of stores they have everywhere. All you need is a few delivery vans, drivers, and software.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  They ran an experiment where they tried to pay people to make deliveries. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-idUSBRE92R03820130328 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-id... They also do offer delivery in some markets: https://grocery.walmart.com/help https://grocery.walmart.com/help Here a local grocery partners with some national backend provider to do deliveries; they estimated demand to be fairly low so there are fairly tight windows on when a particular area will receive deliveries. I imagine the economics are comparable for Walmart. Not a lot of money to make demand delivering a toothbrush, but probably worthwhile to schedule delivery of larger batch orders.
thatwebdude 9y ago
I've moved more and more away from shopping locally at catch-all stores like WalMart/Target. When I can, I try to just buy online, I like the convenience. They could immediately compete if they offered same-day deliveries ala what Amazon does in certain premium (read: not yours) markets; except for most of America. Branded cars delivering groceries and goods same-day to 90+% of America would be a slam-dunk; and something that would take Amazon years to compete with. Considering all the cash these kinds of companies swim in, it seems like a no-brainer to me. Easy enough for the pizza companies, anyway. In fact, there's already one local grocery chain offering delivery (and free even, when you spend > $X). To my knowledge, this is becoming more and more popular across the US.

22 points by miraj 9y ago

ouid 9y ago

ben_jones 9y ago
Yes. All they need to do is 1) not become perforated by fake products and 2) have quick shipping.
- exclusiv 9y ago
  I think they may also need a strong third party marketplace. Amazon gets a lot of great inventory from third parties. Walmart could easily mine and source the best products in each category on Amazon though.
  - NotSammyHagar 9y ago
    Amazon's most serious problem is that they have fake products, and tons of third party resellers that are questionable, but those sellers are also a strenght. If they can fix 3rd party sellers to be trustworthy and legimitate, maybe by kicking out bad or fake ones, they'll win everything.
- sudojudo 9y ago
  3) Lose the reputation of being a scummy company (or just stop being scummy). After seeing what Walmart does to small town economies, and knowing that my taxes help compensate for them not paying a livable wage, and reading about their awful lobbying, and their abusive purchase practices, and on, and on, I want nothing to do with them. Being in a rural area, I have to go well out of my way to avoid physically shopping at Walmart; avoiding them online is easy. All of that said, the vast majority of consumers don't care about ethics in business, and even if they did, Walmart has their propaganda game down pretty well at this point. They'll do fine. Oh yeah, and screw Amazon too. My last two orders have been Chinese knock-offs of the products I actually ordered. You know they're in the shitter when you need to reference a third-party website [1] to help avoid forgeries. [1] http://fakespot.com/ http://fakespot.com/

Yes. I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com because: 1) I don't want the bother of trying to figure out that products are "real" and not knock-offs 2) For some items (most recently under bed storage containers) I need to know the exact dimensions and I could easily find that on Jet but not on Amazon However, I still default to Amazon for other items. So I think Wal-Mart can compete, but I seriously doubt that they will beat Amazon. Jeff Bezos is the Sam Walton of this generation of retail and I don't see anything changing that anytime soon.

thirdsun 9y ago
> I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com As a european I wasn't familiar with Jet.com, but color me impressed - this looks and feels like a way better shopping experience than Amazon's cluttered layout and varying seller quality. If the execution, including fast shipping and great customer support, is at Amazon-level, I'd definitely prefer shopping at jet.

dharmon 9y ago

I think jet.com was a foolish acquisition (at a foolish price), and will be written off in 5 years. Having said that, I think amazon has left a glaring gap in their armor: you cannot trust your purchases from them anymore, and more and more people are figuring it out. I have known for a few years to save my high-dollar purchases for more reputable retailers. I bought an all-clad pan from amazon that I am convinced is a factory 2nd. Now, if I want a new Le Creuset, I get it from Williams-Sonoma or Macy's or someplace I can trust. More recently, however, I realized even low-end purchases are not worth my time. I wanted to buy some frosting tips. After half an hour on Amazon, reading reviews accusing products of being shoddy knock-offs that rust, warp, etc., I realized it's much faster to just drive to a store and buy them. That's what I did, drove to Michael's and bought a set for close to the same price. I will not be renewing my Amazon Prime membership this year. There's just not enough left that I am willing to buy there to bother. This is all surprising, cause Bezos is an absolute beast. In fact, if you told me I had to compete against one of the top tech CEOs, I would pray it wasn't him (I would hope for Larry Page...). How he is missing something so big, this sowing of mistrust, I can't understand. Or it's possible I don't see the bigger game.

bitmapbrother 9y ago
I agree. The acquisition seemed more like desperation than something grounded in logic. Jet was never going to compete with Amazon so the smart play would have been to just sit back and let them burn through their runway and then buy them on the cheap.
lotsofpulp 9y ago
Same here, canceled my Prime and now am doing my shopping at target/staples/lowes/nordstroms/newegg Only hard part is making an account, but that only takes a few seconds and much more efficient than sorting through whatever Amazon calls it's search and filtering system.
coffeevradar 9y ago
I think to the extent there's a bigger game it's that Amazon wants to present to its customers a minimally curated selection of products (and sellers) that includes the full gamut of what is available in the wider world. If they are seen to offer this selection, shoppers will at least begin their product searches on Amazon. Even if many customers opt to eventually buy elsewhere, Amazon will end up with a substantial share of the purchases that result from the initial searches.

tabeth 9y ago

To this day I am still shocked Wal-Mart didn't (and still doesn't) run same day shipping of all of its items in store at prices that beat Amazon's. Not only would this crush Amazon, but would simultaneously restore Walmart's reputation as the storefront itself could be more minimalist as more of its space would be used mainly for warehousing. Seriously. Why aren't they doing this? Does it cost a few orders of magnitude higher than I'm thinking? Wal-Mart presumably has tabs on what its inventory at its own stores are (at least the website does). Wal-Mart, at its peak is pretty close to most people's houses. All they really need is a good operational workflow to reduce the amount of time wasted on inefficient deliveries.

devoply 9y ago
Would be trivial for Wal-Mart to do too considering the number of stores they have everywhere. All you need is a few delivery vans, drivers, and software.
maxerickson 9y ago
They ran an experiment where they tried to pay people to make deliveries. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-idUSBRE92R03820130328 http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-id... They also do offer delivery in some markets: https://grocery.walmart.com/help https://grocery.walmart.com/help Here a local grocery partners with some national backend provider to do deliveries; they estimated demand to be fairly low so there are fairly tight windows on when a particular area will receive deliveries. I imagine the economics are comparable for Walmart. Not a lot of money to make demand delivering a toothbrush, but probably worthwhile to schedule delivery of larger batch orders.

thatwebdude 9y ago

I've moved more and more away from shopping locally at catch-all stores like WalMart/Target. When I can, I try to just buy online, I like the convenience. They could immediately compete if they offered same-day deliveries ala what Amazon does in certain premium (read: not yours) markets; except for most of America. Branded cars delivering groceries and goods same-day to 90+% of America would be a slam-dunk; and something that would take Amazon years to compete with. Considering all the cash these kinds of companies swim in, it seems like a no-brainer to me. Easy enough for the pizza companies, anyway. In fact, there's already one local grocery chain offering delivery (and free even, when you spend > $X). To my knowledge, this is becoming more and more popular across the US.