A piece in Seeking Alpha caught my eye so I thought to post a link here and ask what members think. It suggests that Walmart plans to be able to deliver packages in 2 days or less to 95% of the US population.
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2657295-matching-wal-marts-e-commerce-push-no-small-task
The article is brief but mentions that Walmart has “opened a new 1.2M square-foot fulfillment center in Pennsylvania this week, and has four more e-commerce facilities scheduled to open later this year.”
Five fulfillment centers in a year sounds like some serious backing of an effort to capture market share in the online version of big-box retail. Opening a fulfillment center is not like leasing deadspace in a mall.
The piece goes on to suggest that while the company may be focusing on Amazon as the competition to beat, its step-up in attention to e-commerce has also pressured other major retailers to follow suit.
I don’t particularly follow news on the giant retailers but this struck me as interesting after all the news in the last couple years that was negative about Walmart (patchy stocking of shelves, unattractive presentation in the physical stores etc., not to mention assorted management and wage issues).
Personally I have tended to avoid Walmart like the plague, and not only because of my perception that the employees were treated like an inventory of so many boxes of spare (and optional) parts. Now I wonder if it has turned some corner and I need to update at least my attitude if not my bookmarks and remind my car how to get to some of the nearby physical stores...
So what is your experience of the store in either online or bricks-and-mortar venues?
http://seekingalpha.com/news/2657295-matching-wal-marts-e-commerce-push-no-small-task
The article is brief but mentions that Walmart has “opened a new 1.2M square-foot fulfillment center in Pennsylvania this week, and has four more e-commerce facilities scheduled to open later this year.”
Five fulfillment centers in a year sounds like some serious backing of an effort to capture market share in the online version of big-box retail. Opening a fulfillment center is not like leasing deadspace in a mall.
The piece goes on to suggest that while the company may be focusing on Amazon as the competition to beat, its step-up in attention to e-commerce has also pressured other major retailers to follow suit.
I don’t particularly follow news on the giant retailers but this struck me as interesting after all the news in the last couple years that was negative about Walmart (patchy stocking of shelves, unattractive presentation in the physical stores etc., not to mention assorted management and wage issues).
Personally I have tended to avoid Walmart like the plague, and not only because of my perception that the employees were treated like an inventory of so many boxes of spare (and optional) parts. Now I wonder if it has turned some corner and I need to update at least my attitude if not my bookmarks and remind my car how to get to some of the nearby physical stores...
So what is your experience of the store in either online or bricks-and-mortar venues?
