Walmart Adds to its e-Commerce Family

OCTOBER 05, 2017

By leveraging its fleet of trucks to deliver products directly to its stores, Walmart e-commerce is garnering success. This strategy minimizes last mile delivery costs, while passing on the savings to its consumers.

In fact, utilizing the “Click-and-Collect” model has helped the retailer set itself apart from others, thanks to its physical stores serving as distribution centers — customers walk up to intelligent package lockers, scan a bar code sent to their smart phones and retrieve packages.

Testing Click-and-Collect Innovation

But Walmart also acknowledges that there are several consumers who want their online orders delivered directly to their homes.

So, it picked one of its top markets to test high-impact innovation. The area’s density, along with proximity to fulfillment centers, mad it a perfect place.

The retailer acquired Parcel, a same-day delivery service specializing in perishable and non-perishable deliveries to customers in New York City. It makes same-day deliveries in scheduled two-hour windows around the clock, seven days a week.

“Delivery is increasingly one of the most important elements for today’s online shoppers, as demand for speed, flexibility and reliability continue to grow,” Nate Faust, senior vice president of the Walmart e-commerce supply chain, said in the company’s blog post. “And while customers are looking for low prices, we also know they want convenient experiences that make shopping easier.”

Currently, Walmart e-commerce offers free two-day shipping, free online grocery pickup service, and a discount pickup program that involves its pickup solutions.