6/26

In interviews with Recode (above), Reuters and others, Marc Lore the head of Walmart's ecommerce operation has announced the company will further discount prices for products purchased online and picked up at a store.  According to Reuters:

Online orders picked up in store already qualify for no shipping charges since the retailer saves on shipping fees. The latest discounts come on top of that. For example, a Vizio 70-inch 4K Ultra HD television priced at $1,698 for store pick up will qualify for an additional discount of $50... Lore said Wal-Mart is able to offer these discounts as it is able to eliminate delivery costs by leveraging its fleet of more than 6,700 trucks to deliver products from warehouses to stores.

According to the Washington Post:

Pickup not only allows retailers to save on shipping costs, but by bringing the shopper into the store, it provides a chance to entice them to spend more money. Kohl’s, for example, said last year that for every $100 a customer spends on store pickup, they buy, on average, $25 worth of additional goods when they come to retrieve the order.

This is a discount that reflects a real supply chain cost-savings for Walmart.  It is also a cost savings that Walmart's physical network allows, not available to Amazon or other purely online and less omnipresent retailers.

The pickup discount does not help Walmart with time-sensitive, affluent urban consumers that Amazon Prime has been so effective capturing.