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Walmart is taking a bit of an nontraditional approach to boost sales ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events by raising prices for products sold online and discounting those same items in physical retail stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, the big-box store has quietly raised prices for household and food items such as toothbrushes, macaroni and cheese, and dog food on its website while the prices in stores remained the same. If there are price discrepancies between online and in-store purchases, Walmart will now highlight this on the product's web listing to encourage customers to buy them from their local stores.
It's all part of an effort to increase foot traffic as Walmart continues to compete with Amazon just about everywhere else.
[...] With the new pricing strategy, a twin-pack of Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper costs $3.30 on Walmart.com, but goes as low as $2.50 if purchased at a store in Illinois. The aim is to also help reduce processing costs and increase online sales margins, since driving customers to stores means less shipping costs for the retailer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Friday November 17 2017, @04:57PM
From the article I read, they are trying to set the online prices to compete with Amazon. For things like kitchen staples, Amazon is typically more expensive than retail anyway, so this price dynamic already existed for the most place.
Proof: a few weeks ago I had a conference call with my friend, and at the end I said something like "Tony, thank you for your help. Let me buy you a present: Alexa, by me breakfast burritos". Because he was in his living room on speaker phone, Alexa bought something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Earth-Burrito-Breakfast-Ounce/dp/B00L5K34LQ/ref=sr_1_2_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1510937767&sr=8-2&keywords=breakfast+burrito [amazon.com]
That is 12 burritos for $62. The reviews mostly complain about the price. Tony immediately canceled the order.