How Walmart is Gaining Advantage Over Amazon

Amazon for a long time now has been the number one online retailer with billions of dollars in sales over the years. However, it seems like Walmart, Amazon’s direct competitor in this space, will not be playing catch up for too long. The two online retailers have been going at it for quite some time trying to win market share over one another. In the midst of this battle of the titans, Walmart is steadily and surely making notable gains that could throw Amazon of its game.

But what are some of these gains? What is it about Walmart that gives it a competitive advantage over Amazon?

Well, let’s break down the facts for you:

Walmart Still Has Physical Stores

Unlike Amazon, which is a purely online retail business, Walmart still has maintained its physical stores. The company operates thousands of stores in the US including 3,522 supercenters. This gives Walmart a distinct advantage because it can leverage on these stores to cut shipping and make products cheaper. The retailer is already rolling out a discount program where customers are given the opportunity to save if they pick up products purchased online in any of the Walmart stores near them instead of having them shipped to their home. These bargains are what people are looking for. In addition to this, Walmart will be a more attractive option for the budget conscious buyer and let’s face it, no one will buy the same thing at Amazon if they can get it for less at Walmart.

Walmart’s Grocery Business Is Way Ahead

In 2007, Amazon launched Amazon Fresh, a grocery delivery service that is designed to diversify its products. Even though Amazon Fresh has picked up in the last few years, it’s miles behind Walmart’s grocery business that has been here for quite some time now. Walmart already has physical grocery stores that are operating in various parts of the US. This makes the logistics and costs of shipping significantly lower. Amazon is planning to launch its own grocery stores in the US but even then, it has a lot of catching up to do in this space. Some might argue that it might not even be realistically possible for Amazon to outmaneuver Walmart in the groceries space.

Walmart Distribution Infrastructure Is a Big Plus

The aim of e-commerce is to create a seamless shopping experience. People want to buy stuff online and almost automatically have it delivered exactly how they ordered it. In order to make this happen, e-commerce retailers need an efficient distribution system. At the moment, Walmart has that. Even though Amazon has created a unique and efficient e-commerce platform where people can buy what they want, in order to offer the best experience, they need to develop a physical distribution infrastructure. This will help reduce shipping costs and delivery times.

At the moment, Walmart appears to have that distribution but Amazon has the seamless e-commerce platform. The two rivals are in a place where they need each other. However, the argument is that the amount of time and resources needed to build a strong distribution infrastructure is so high compared to the resources needed to build a more effective e-commerce platform. This simply gives Walmart the edge.

Regardless of these advantages, there is no doubt that Walmart is a few steps behind Amazon as of yet. The question is who will turn out on top. Amazon is trying hard to out-convenience Walmart while Walmart is trying hard to outshine Amazon with physical stores. To break this impasse, experts argue that both companies have to consider a major innovation push and risk making mistakes in the process of learning. Innovation such as this will settle the competition once and for all. Whether that will be Walmart or Amazon remains to be seen but one thing is clear, this competitiveness can only be a good thing for the consumers who buy stuff online from both Amazon and Walmart platforms.