Walmart will give you a discount if you pick up your online order from a Walmart store
In the fight for online shoppers, Walmart has one thing Amazon doesn't: stores. Lots of em.
The retail giant is taking advantage of its one upper hand with a new way to get discounts when you shop online. For 10,000 of the most popular items sold only on Walmart.com, you'll get a discount if you ship them to a local Walmart store instead of to your own address.
"This is consistent with Walmart's long heritage," said Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. e-commerce and the founder of Walmart's acquisition Jet.com.
The discounts — a few dollars on online-only items so far including car seats, toys, and TVs — will be available starting April 19. Eventually, Walmart plans to roll out discounts for in-store pickup to 1 million products.
Image: walmart
When Walmart in August acquired Lore's Jet.com — which was basically the only real U.S. competitor to Amazon — the big box store signaled its intention to take on the tech giant. Walmart introduced free two-day shipping in January on purchases of $35 and up. That move put the company on equal footing with Amazon for customers who don't have Prime memberships.
The "last mile" of delivery — to a customer's exact address — is usually the most expensive part for mega-retailers like Walmart. Avoiding that final cost will allow Walmart to lower its own costs and provide the discounts for pickup.
"We do believe this is unique to Walmart — the ability to have 4,700 points of pickup," Lore said.
Amazon doesn't have actual stores (besides a bookstore and grocery store or two), but it does have Amazon Lockers, where you can ship your order to a predetermined Amazon location instead of your own address. Amazon Locker discounts, coming soon?
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