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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: 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.