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James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that for the past 16 years Walmart has often acted as though it hoped Amazon would just go away. When Walmart announced last week that it was significantly increasing its investment in e-commerce, it tacitly acknowledged that it had fallen far behind Amazon in the race for online customers. Now, the magnitude of the task it faces has grown exponentially as e-commerce growth continues to surge globally. "Walmart.com has been severely mismanaged," says Burt P. Flickinger III. "Walmart would go a few years and invest strategically and significantly in e-commerce, then other years it wouldn't. Meanwhile, Amazon is making moves in e-commerce that's put Walmart so far behind that it might not be able to catch up for 10 more years, if ever."
In 1999, Amazon was a fledgling company with annual revenue of $1.6 billion; Walmart's was about $138 billion. By last year, Amazon's revenue was about 54 times what it was in 1999, nearly $89 billion, almost all of it from online sales. Walmart's was about three times what it was 15 years before, almost $486 billion, and only a small fraction of that — 2.5 percent, or $12.2 billion — came from Walmart.com. Walmart's superefficient distribution system — a function of its enormous volume and geographic reach — was long the secret to Walmart's immense profitability. Ravi Jariwala, a Walmart spokesman, says that Walmart is building vast new fulfillment centers and is rapidly enhancing its delivery capabilities to take advantage of its extensive store network to provide convenient in-store pickup and adds that 70 percent of the American population lives within five miles of a Walmart store. "This is where e-commerce is headed," says Jariwala, which is to a hybrid online/in-store model. "Customers want the accessibility and immediacy of a physical store," along with the benefits of online shopping.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:41AM
Both the walmart and amazon websites are shitty, shitty interfaces. They look pretty enough. But try doing a global search and then sorting by price on Amazon - not an option.
I bet they think it is in their interest to have shitty search functionality, it lets them feed you the search results they want you to see rather than what you want to see. So you end up settle for something more profitable to them.
And walmart - their damn phone app will tell you where an item is located in the store. But only on the phone, not on the website. WTF man! I want to make a shopping list ahead of time and zoom through the place, not fuck around for hours in a giant cavernous warehouse. But they probably think I'll end up impulse buying useless shit if I just spend more time there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @05:01AM
Starting from their home page, enter your search terms. Then, on the search results page, choose the "price: low to high" or "price: high to low" option from the "sort by" menu and search again. It's just a bit inconvenient.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 25 2015, @08:20AM
Yes, BUT - the system is rigged. I've read a number of articles suggesting that Amazon games the system. I find better deals, as often as not, if I go in search of a product via Google. I needed an electric fence charger a little over a year ago. I wanted a six joule charger. Amazon found them for me, but the prices seemed high - $350 and up. I finally settled on a farm supply offering it for $215. The problem here was not the specialty store having better access to specialty items. Amazon has the same access that the farm supply does to the manufacturers, and maybe even better access. The deal was, Amazon assumed that I wasn't sophisticated enough to search further than their own well-known site.
More, Amazon doesn't offer you and me and Joe Blow down the street the same deals. Prices are adjusted, based on shopping history and other factors. If you're wealthier than I am, you'll likely get an offer based on what Amazon thinks you'll pay, whereas I'll get a lower priced offer for the same thing.
I both like, and despise Amazon. They ARE convenient, and they DO offer almost the lowest prices on many common goods. But they do game the system.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/type-dynamic-pricing-amazon-use-27704.html [chron.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday October 25 2015, @08:08AM
"But they probably think I'll end up impulse buying useless shit if I just spend more time there."
DING! We have a winner!
Think about the layout of your favorite convenience store chain. Impulse buying fuels their income. It could be argued that the existence of convenience stores is all about impulse buying. I'm somewhat surprised that you can pay for your gas at the pumps. They would much rather have you step inside, where you can see the chocolate, and smell the deep fried poisons. Most gas pumps now have little displays on top of the pumps, advertising snow cones, or chocolates on sale inside.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday October 25 2015, @12:18PM
But try doing a global search and then sorting by price on Amazon - not an option.
That UI would not be useful so its blocked for awful searches and permitted only for good searches.
Search for "lamp" now order by price just groups up the automotive replacement lightbulbs, then paperback book authors named "Lamp", then cheap home/dorm decor grade of interior desk lamps, then hardcover book authors named "Lamp" then artistic looking nicer grade home decor desk lamps, then weird things like truck hydraulic snow plow kits for over a kilobuck including "free" plowing lamps.
Another good laugh is search Amazon for "taco". Now you want seasoning, books, Halloween costumes for humans and pets, a taco food van kids play toy, weird looking kitchen gadgets or a cooking game on Amazon's app store? I'm not sure sorting by price is really meaningful.
Now try a search for "T10 LED lamp" and it shows up in 22 departments HOWEVER there is a dropdown for sorting by price low-to-high and it pretty much works as you'd think.
Unfortunately their pricing is totally powned by scam sellers like ebay had. Superficially the cheapest T10 base LED light bulb is fifty cents, however the shipping cost is a mere $14.15. If you click "refine by Prime shipping only" then there's only 13 departments but most of the search results are crap and the only T10 base LED bulb is $4.44. Which is cheaper than my local car parts store.
What I'd like to see is sorting by total cost to reduce scammers, or a "refine by shipping costs less than 10% of price" or similar option.