We had just heard about Walmart’s new fulfillment service competitive with FBA, when we learned the retail giant was launching a membership program a la Amazon Prime. Recode reported Walmart will begin testing the membership program as early as March, initially as a rebrand of same-day grocery service Delivery Unlimited.
Softer-than-expected holiday sales drove Walmart’s Q4 2019 earnings below expectations, but strong ecommerce and online grocery sales provided buoyancy and optimism for the year ahead. U.S. ecommerce sales grew 35%, fueled largely by grocery pickup and delivery, propelling walmart.com to its highest quarterly growth of the year.
Walmart is launching a program called “Competitive Price Adjustment” that will temporarily lower the prices consumers pay for some items on its marketplace. Here is how Walmart is competing with Amazon with this new program.
Last week was not a good one for Walmart or Marc Lore, its CEO and president of its U.S. ecommerce division. Walmart is reportedly selling personal shopping service Jetblack to outside investors, selling its online woman’s apparel brand Modcloth to Go Global Retail and trimming staff at men’s apparel retailer Bonobos.
As was expected since ecommerce losses are mounting, Walmart is looking to shed one or more of the several digitally native vertically integrated brands it picked up on a shopping spree that began after the game-changing Jet.com acquisition in 2016, with ModCloth being first up on the block.
Walmart announced plans to invest $1.2 billion into its China business to beat out competition. The company plans to invest the money into distribution centers over the next 20 years with a focus on grocery delivery.
It was the power of paying attention that led Andy Dunn, senior vice president of digital consumer brand for Walmart, to launch online men’s apparel brand Bonobos and ultimately change the way he looked at retail.
Walmart announced that Jet.com president Simon Belsham is expected to step down in August and that the company is merging Jet.com business into its Walmart.com ecommerce operations.
Walmart reported 37% growth in ecommerce sales in the first quarter, with online grocery, home and fashion categories as the primary drivers. Total revenue for the quarter was $123.9 billion, an increase of $1.2 billion or 1%.
Walmart is removing its products from the Google Express delivery service and the Google Shopping Actions platform, after offering them there for a little over a year in an effort to grow ecommerce sales and do battle with Amazon. Here is a look back at the Google and Walmart partnership.