Walmart Takes Aim At Amazon With New Two-Day Shipping Program
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Pilot program will be discounted and tightened to better compete with its online rival.
In an effort to better compete with online rival Amazon, WalMart is partnering with a number of potential new shipping partners to build a regional delivery network supporting free two-day shipping services, the Wall Street Journal reports. As part of its pilot “Shipping Pass,” an invitation-only $50 per year subscription that garners its members free three-day shipping, Walmart plans to tighten that delivery window by a day and discount the annual fee by a dollar to $49, the report states.
The USA Today also reported that this program could help better position Walmart to challenge Amazon’s Prime subscription service, which promises good to members within two days but at a $99 annual fee.
The WalMart shipping network uses eight e-commerce warehouses positioned across the U.S., with construction on the ninth and final site scheduled to conclude by the end of 2016. According to the Wall Street Journal, sources reported that WalMart met with regional delivery companies in February to solicit bids for the new effort.
According to the Wall Street Journal, FedEx, which presently handles the bulk of WalMart's shipping, would not be part of the new delivery network. However, a WalMart spokesperson told Retail Dive that assertion is not correct. "The reality is we’ve always used a broad range of carrier partners—both national and regional—to fulfill online orders to customers and stores, and we’ll continue to do so in the future as we further enhance our fulfillment capabilities," WalMart's Ravi Jariwala said in an email. "To suggest we won’t be using FedEx or other national carriers is incorrect."
As part of a continuing strategy to become more competitive, WalMart has been making aggressive moves to increase its e-commerce presence and digital services, shutting hundreds of stores, while it upgrades others, and improving the overall shopping experience for customers.