Walmart’s Free One-Day Online Shipping to Challenge Amazon
Amazon has a new shipping competitor — Walmart.
With the race to deliver in one day the new standard, many large companies are striving to deliver at faster rates than ever before.
Last month, Amazon announced that its US Prime membership program would change from two-day shipping to just one-day shipping.
In a bid to stay competitive, Walmart has announced that it has its own plans to deliver in one day as well, noting that customers can get it without a membership fee, which Amazon still has.
Yes, the biggest difference between what Amazon and Walmart are offering is the fee. Amazon requires a $119 annual membership fee while Walmart’s service is free on orders over $35.
Amazon has noted that the one-day shipping ability will be slowly built up over the next year, but Walmart started offering “nextday delivery” immediately in select locations: Phoenix, Las Vegas and Southern California coming soon.
Walmart anticipates being able to nextday deliver for 75% of the US by the end of 2019.
Marc Lore, Walmart’s head of US e-commerce, noted: “We feel good about where we are and where we’re going. We’re expecting, based on research, customers to really appreciate the upgrade here.”
Some of the anticipated impacts of Walmart’s move include other retailers and, of course, Amazon.
Other retailers may need to offer one-day or even same-day shipping to stay relevant with consumers. Meanwhile, Walmart’s free service may force Amazon to cease any price raises of Prime in the future.
While Walmart held back from the e-commerce market for a long time, allowing Amazon to grow to behemoth size, it started bolstering online presence in 2016, with the purchase of Jet, and then continued by purchasing India’s Flipkart in 2018.
Currently, Walmart’s e-commerce sales are growing faster than Amazon’s, although from a much smaller base.
