Walmart seems poised to steal a lot of cost conscious shoppers from Amazon because Amazon simply doesn't offer a lot of the "value priced" product lines that Walmart does and they've basically been competitive with Amazon for shipping times for quite awhile now.
Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
21–30 of 258 posts
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#22That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up. Considering that technically they have one fulfillment center in every small town they should be able to achieve really short lead times out of these. Fulfillment Centers obviously being all their stores. While it is a non-trivial thing to connect all these stores to last mile courier services it is not necessarily overly complex. Just what th…
I'm guessing the more complex part of the operation is inventory management. The optimal way to stock a warehouse is different than the optimal way to stock shelves, and that has knock-on effects all the way down the supply chain. Plus, the inventory tracking in a physical store that is exposed to consumers is less robust in general.
Generally speaking, inventories go up with the number of warehouses. Plus the uncertainty of quantities and the state of goods in a store. On the other hand, Walmart used to be the model case for cross docking, so their Supply Chain isn't too bad. And stores still have some local inventory in the background. Not much, but it is there and can be used and much closer controlled.
That this isn't easy was proven by Amazon's issues integrating Whole Foods. And Amazon is good at these things.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#23They have this already for groceries in some markets. The problem is $13+ of delivery fees and tips. This has got to be worked down to $0.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#24That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up. Considering that technically they have one fulfillment center in every small town they should be able to achieve really short lead times out of these. Fulfillment Centers obviously being all their stores. While it is a non-trivial thing to connect all these stores to last mile courier services it is not necessarily overly complex. Just what th…
> That is maybe the first sign of brick and mortar retail finally waking up. Hasn't Walmart been inching into this space for a while? I already cross-shop with Amazon all the time, and for me Walmart's delivery is often quicker than Amazon's already.
>Hasn't Walmart been inching into this space for a while?
Yup. An aircraft carrier cannot turn on a dime but when it finally comes around it's bad news for anyone in its way.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#25I'm excited for the future when we'll finally have day-before shipping, where ML predicts what I want before I even order it.
Hopefully it can also predict me backing out right before hitting buy. Otherwise life is going to get expensive.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#26It's good to see some viable competition to Amazon, but it's regretful that it comes from, and probably can only come from, another mega-corporation with an extremely poor track record around worker treatment. I wonder how viable some sort of supply-chain co-op would be. Basically, get all of the medium players together to share resources to try to match these gargantuan companies on the delivery and returns front. I…
In a sense some of the food delivery companies are doing exactly this. Perhaps if one of them branched out...
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#27Does anyone know if Walmart has consigned, third party merchandise like Amazon does (e.g. sold by X, but shipped prime)? And if so, does it get commingled with the Walmart supply chain inventory? My issue with Amazon is that I'm afraid of knockoffs, counterfeits and plain old cheap crap with fake reviews (really, 2000 people decided to review your plastic drinking cups?). These days, I'm shopping more and more at Tar…
At present Walmart does not commingle its inventory with 3rd party sellers. Things sold 3rd party are also shipped 3rd party so it is currently immune to the counterfeit problem that amazon is having.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#28Amazon has rolled out same day delivery for my area and it is too convenient to pass up. I used to go to Brick and Mortar to get my items faster and I felt good that I was supporting them, but now I will have a hard time saying no. Walmart has always had a terrible website experience for me. It's difficult to find items that will be in store for pick up and difficult to tell which items are part of the third party ma…
Coming up with a next day delivery service on scale for every brick and mortar retailer out there sounds like a good start-up idea. Kind of Uber for Walmart or some such thing!
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#29The relentless competition in retail never ceases to amaze me. I remember when online order delivery times for basic items were measured in weeks. Now, I can order the most obscure of items and get it at my door in 1-2 days.
>Now, I can order the most obscure of items and get it at my door in 1-2 days.
For anything obscure but to big to fit in a bubble wrap envelope you're still going to pay big bucks though.
Re: Walmart announces next-day delivery, firing back at Amazon
#30I hope they can do a better job than Amazon but I'm not confident. I'm currently gaming their system of one day delivery failure credits because they can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact hat USPS won't deliver to my door and the packages are too large. USPS gets a box, it won't fit, they take it back to the post office and tell me I can pick it up the next day. I contact amazon, tell them it's late because the package is too large and they picked the wrong carrier and they give me a $5 credit. I tell USPS I'm not circumnavigating a lake to pick up the package and they can send it back. I border again and go through the same thing. I've told Amazon that they can't ship large items to me via USPS but they can't seem to figure out how to handle it. I even asked them to not use USPS (they're unreliable anyway) but they're stick in a loop. I'm openly and publicly doing this and they don't care. It's stupid. Thankfully it's a low priority item and I don't actually need it. Some day it will show up... maybe.
Walmart, if you can figure out that problem, you'll have my money.