
Can Wal-Mart’s Expensive New E-Commerce Operation Compete with Amazon? - miraj
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-05-04/can-wal-mart-s-expensive-new-e-commerce-operation-compete-with-amazon
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dharmon
I think jet.com was a foolish acquisition (at a foolish price), and will be
written off in 5 years.

Having said that, I think amazon has left a glaring gap in their armor: you
cannot trust your purchases from them anymore, and more and more people are
figuring it out.

I have known for a few years to save my high-dollar purchases for more
reputable retailers. I bought an all-clad pan from amazon that I am convinced
is a factory 2nd. Now, if I want a new Le Creuset, I get it from Williams-
Sonoma or Macy's or someplace I can trust.

More recently, however, I realized even low-end purchases are not worth my
time. I wanted to buy some frosting tips. After half an hour on Amazon,
reading reviews accusing products of being shoddy knock-offs that rust, warp,
etc., I realized it's much faster to just drive to a store and buy them.
That's what I did, drove to Michael's and bought a set for close to the same
price.

I will not be renewing my Amazon Prime membership this year. There's just not
enough left that I am willing to buy there to bother.

This is all surprising, cause Bezos is an absolute beast. In fact, if you told
me I had to compete against one of the top tech CEOs, I would pray it wasn't
him (I would hope for Larry Page...).

How he is missing something so big, this sowing of mistrust, I can't
understand. Or it's possible I don't see the bigger game.

~~~
thatwebdude
> wanted to buy some frosting tips. After half an hour on Amazon, reading
> reviews accusing products of being shoddy knock-offs that rust, warp, etc.,
> I realized it's much faster to just drive to a store and buy them. That's
> what I did, drove to Michael's and bought a set for close to the same price.

Would you feel the same way if the rating system was right there in-store on a
tag?

I understand taking the ratings as a deciding factor; but when I buy odd-
things I'm no expert on; I tend to go with gut and middle-of-the-road and I'm
hardly disappointed. But that's something I learned from shopping at brick-
and-mortar.

~~~
maxerickson
They are saying that Michael's brand reputation (as compared to Amazon) was
the deciding factor.

The reviews are just evidence that Amazon isn't protecting their reputation
very well.

~~~
thatwebdude
Gotcha, I tend to think of Amazon as another Walmart; specializing in nothing
but maybe the online experience. I kinda feel the same about their
software/devices. It's only really good at selling you more of their products;
for a tablet, it's no iPad.

Perhaps the move will be towards specialty stores; as these may be the only
competition Amazon may have.

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tryitnow
Yes.

I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com because: 1) I don't want
the bother of trying to figure out that products are "real" and not knock-offs
2) For some items (most recently under bed storage containers) I need to know
the exact dimensions and I could easily find that on Jet but not on Amazon

However, I still default to Amazon for other items. So I think Wal-Mart can
compete, but I seriously doubt that they will beat Amazon.

Jeff Bezos is the Sam Walton of this generation of retail and I don't see
anything changing that anytime soon.

~~~
thirdsun
> I've already switched some of my purchases to Jet.com

As a european I wasn't familiar with Jet.com, but color me impressed - this
looks and feels like a way better shopping experience than Amazon's cluttered
layout and varying seller quality. If the execution, including fast shipping
and great customer support, is at Amazon-level, I'd definitely prefer shopping
at jet.

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tabeth
To this day I am still shocked Wal-Mart didn't (and still doesn't) run same
day shipping of all of its items in store at prices that beat Amazon's.

Not only would this crush Amazon, but would simultaneously restore Walmart's
reputation as the storefront itself could be more minimalist as more of its
space would be used mainly for warehousing.

Seriously. Why aren't they doing this? Does it cost a few orders of magnitude
higher than I'm thinking? Wal-Mart presumably has tabs on what its inventory
at its own stores are (at least the website does). Wal-Mart, at its peak is
pretty close to most people's houses. All they really need is a good
operational workflow to reduce the amount of time wasted on inefficient
deliveries.

~~~
maxerickson
They ran an experiment where they tried to pay people to make deliveries.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-
id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-retail-walmart-delivery-
idUSBRE92R03820130328)

They also do offer delivery in some markets:

[https://grocery.walmart.com/help](https://grocery.walmart.com/help)

Here a local grocery partners with some national backend provider to do
deliveries; they estimated demand to be fairly low so there are fairly tight
windows on when a particular area will receive deliveries. I imagine the
economics are comparable for Walmart. Not a lot of money to make demand
delivering a toothbrush, but probably worthwhile to schedule delivery of
larger batch orders.

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thatwebdude
I've moved more and more away from shopping locally at catch-all stores like
WalMart/Target. When I can, I try to just buy online, I like the convenience.

They could immediately compete if they offered same-day deliveries ala what
Amazon does in certain premium (read: not yours) markets; except for most of
America. Branded cars delivering groceries and goods same-day to 90+% of
America would be a slam-dunk; and something that would take Amazon years to
compete with. Considering all the cash these kinds of companies swim in, it
seems like a no-brainer to me. Easy enough for the pizza companies, anyway.

In fact, there's already one local grocery chain offering delivery (and free
even, when you spend > $X). To my knowledge, this is becoming more and more
popular across the US.

------
ouid
no

~~~
ben_jones
Yes. All they need to do is 1) not become perforated by fake products and 2)
have quick shipping.

~~~
exclusiv
I think they may also need a strong third party marketplace. Amazon gets a lot
of great inventory from third parties. Walmart could easily mine and source
the best products in each category on Amazon though.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Amazon's most serious problem is that they have fake products, and tons of
third party resellers that are questionable, but those sellers are also a
strenght. If they can fix 3rd party sellers to be trustworthy and legimitate,
maybe by kicking out bad or fake ones, they'll win everything.

