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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 25 2015, @01:33AM
In Portland, Amazon.com is delivering food for restaurants. When its customers pay a $99 annual fee, there's no additional fee for these deliveries:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/restaurant-delivery-on-prime-now-comes-to-portland-2015-10-20 [marketwatch.com]
In certain cities, the company is offering delivery within an hour or two. The two-hour delivery is available with a $99/year fee; the one-hour delivery costs about $8 per order in addition to the annual fee:
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/amazon-brings-its-one-hour-delivery-service-prime-now-to-the-san-francisco-bay-area/ [techcrunch.com]
http://www.bidnessetc.com/55767-amazoncom-inc-prime-now-expands-to-san-francisco-and-four-cities-in-texas/ [bidnessetc.com]
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Amazon-Prime-Now-delivers-one-hour-shipping-to-6584383.php [sfgate.com]
Peapod [wikipedia.org] has been doing this since at least the '90s. I thought it would catch on much sooner.