Comparison between Amazon and Wal-Mart in the Fashion Retail Industry

This paper analyzes the competition between Amazon and Wal-Mart in the fashion retail industry. It provides company overviews, compares their strategies and market positions, and offers recommendations for both companies.

Fashion retail industry

Fashion retail industry
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Company overview of Amazon and Wal-Mart...............................................................................2
Comparison between Amazon and Wal-Mart.................................................................................3
Recommendation.............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................6
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Fashion retail industry
It has been said that Amazon can and will overtake Wal-Mart as the world's largest
retailer within the next 10-15 years?
Introduction
It has been analyzed that Amazon is considered as one of the largest ecommerce website
and Wal-Mart is considered as one of the biggest American multinational retail company that
manages the entire chain of supermarkets and grocery stores. Therefore, in this paper the
discussion will be made on the both companies in relation to the success in the next 10 to 15
years.
Company overview of Amazon and Wal-Mart
Amazon provides a good experience to the customers and also focuses on enhancing the
choice of the products whereas it has been observed that Wal-Mart has a large network of the
store locations and also they focus on providing the products at low price. It can be stated that
Amazon was originated in 1994 by CEO Jeff Bezos and currently company sells more than 300
million products in the different categories. The company takes into consideration different
models such as Amazon retail, Amazon market and Amazon Web services. It has been observed
that Amazon Web services are known as the cloud computing platform that helps to offer the
online storage services and also there are virtual servers (Caraway, 2016).
Wal-Mart was founded in 1962, by Sam Walton and it is one of the biggest companies in
terms of revenue. It has been stated by the Wal-Mart company that there are 11,526 stores on the
global platform and less than 3% sales are generated through online platform (Perez, 2019).
Amazon Wal-Mart
 Employees : 154,000 2.2 Million
 Shareholders: 2,744 250,000
 Revenue: 100.5 Billion 486 Billion
 Market share: $307
Billion
$187 Billion
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Fashion retail industry
Comparison between Amazon and Wal-Mart
It has been observed that Amazon is focusing on purchasing the chain of the famous
grocery stores with the Whole food deal for more than $13.7 Billion whereas Wal- Mart is also
emphasizing on picking up the another apparel vendor with the Bonobos for $310 Million. Also
it has been noted that Wal-Mart is making a strong move to compete with the Amazon business.
But on the other hand Amazon is also emphasizing on figuring the merger with the Brick and
Mortar stores. In the present scenario, it has been examined that Wal-Mart is targeting the prime
business of Amazon by launching free two day shipping on the various products and this offer is
provided to the customers without any annual membership. It is important for the Amazon
Company to attain the Wal-Mart customers as it has saturated the middle to high end market and
with the prime ownership (Correll et al., 2018).
Amazon also emphasized on the considering the strategies to manage the business of the
grocery. It has been seen that to give tough competition as the online retailer, the company
focused on offering the fresh items and also the frozen items to the customers. Amazon has
brought improvisation in these areas and also they focused on delivering the products via
Amazon Fresh but the company is not able to offer large scale of products, only because if the
logistics and economies required for delivering the products which are perishable in nature
(LeCavalier, 2016).
(Source: Perez, 2019).
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Fashion retail industry
But it has been stated that Wal-Mart also has an advantage. The company has the store
within the 10 miles in relation to the 90% of the American shoppers and also they have enhanced
their services by taking orders from the online platforms. The company is also emphasizing on
making the process easy by trailing drive up grocery pickup kiosks. But it can be stated that, on
the other hand, Amazon is now also the newcomer for the brick and mortar as compared to the
Wal-Mart company (Perez, 2019).
(Source: Perez, 2019)
For instance: Amazon emphasized on opening the physical bookstores in the US market
which has helped the company to bring improvisation in the store format and cashier free
services are also offered to the customers so that it can be easy to attain the market share. But the
company lack in the wealth of the institutional knowledge in relation to the physical retail and
the same is applied with the Wal-Mart company. Due to this, it has been seen that Amazon is
focusing on grabbing the edge related to the retailers such as Whole Foods and also it offers the
company a nationwide retail footprint, which will help to maintain the large market share in the
market.
Amazon is also trying to figure out the retail outlets whereas Wal-Mart is learning to
leverage the stores of brick and mortar by pulling the consumers towards the products of the
Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart is incentivizing the online customers by the outlet to pick up the products
so that it can be easy to reduce the cost and now the company is turning its store staff into the
delivery drivers. The drivers are assigned the task to drop the products of the customers to the
given location by the customers (Reich & Bearman, 2018).
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Fashion retail industry
In the present scenario, it has been evaluated that customers are giving preference to shop
from the outlets as it helps to boost the experience by seeing the products in their hand. It has
also been easy for the customers to purchase the products quickly without searching on the
website and waiting for the delivery. Also, Amazon is emphasizing on establishing the stores and
they are purchasing the products from the Whole Foods but on the other hand Wal-Mart is also
making the online catalog for the customers so that it can be easy to attain the competitive
advantage in reference to the Amazon Company. There are many people who are emphasizing
on investing on the logistics related to online shopping but Wal-Mart is also focusing on
introducing the “Pickup discount” program in the market (Newcombe, Rath, Zhang, Munteanu,
Brooker & Deardeuff, 2015).
Both the approach is related with the program of bringing the cost of the e-commerce
down and also it give permission to the customers to make their own choice in relation to the
willingness of the customers to purchase the products at low price. In the case of Wal-Mart, it
has been seen that there are choices which brought the overall retail stores into the equation.
Also it has been seen that with the subsidiary of Jet.com, Wal-Mart is maintaining the market
share in the online business and giving tough competition to Amazon in the areas where they
lack in the inventory. Jet attained the home goods store Hay needle, competitors of the Shoe
Buy and also the clothing retailer ModCloth. In context to the Wal-Mart company, it has been
seen that focus is given on considering the outdoor retailer Moose jaw, which have the stores in
the market (Perez, 2019).
In relation to the Wal-Mart company, it has been observed that there are many moves
which are considered to enhance the market position in the apparel sector and in the present
scenario; it is one of the largest category in online retailing. But Amazon is now also focusing on
approaching to this category from the next angle but the company is emphasizing creating its
own label for the products related to fashion. In this segment, the products such as workout
clothes and men shirts are made with the label of the company. But the sale of the apparel on the
global platform is still challenging because of the issue related to size and also the time taken to
deliver the products. But on the other hand, Wal-Mart focuses on offering the apparel products
on the offline and also on the online platform. The company has the strategy of picking up the
products from their local stores, which can also be one of the convenient sources for the
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Fashion retail industry
customers in the highly competitive market. But in relation to the Amazon Company, it has been
seen that there is no clothing retail presence in the market, which affect the overall sales of the
product in highly competitive market (Singh, 2019).
Recommendation
Strength and weakness
It can be recommended that the strength possessed by the Wal-Mart company is related
with the large market share and also the number of the employees in the workplace. But on the
same hand it can be stated that it is one of the weakness of the Amazon Company, as there are
only 154,000 employees in the workplace (Yuan, Pavlidis, Jain & Caster, 2016).
Threat and opportunities
In relation to the Amazon Company, it can be seen that company focuses on offering
large variety of products by sitting at home whereas in relation to this Wal-Mart, is offering the
products but for purchasing the customers have to visit or think twice and this can be considered
as the threat. So, the opportunity for both the companies is to offer the products at low price and
with proper services.
Conclusion
By analyzing the paper, it can be concluded that it will be difficult for Amazon to
overtake Wal-Mart as the world's largest retailer within the next 10-15 years. This is because of
the many factors in relation to both companies. It has been examined that in Wal-Mart, there are
approximately 2.2 Million employees but in Amazon there are only 154,000 employees. In terms
of revenue and market share also it can be stated that the revenue of the Wal-Mart is 486 Billion
with the market share of $186 Billion. But Amazon have100.5 Billion revenue with the market
share of $307 Billion. So, it can be stated that Wal-Mart will win and Amazon will lose.
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Fashion retail industry
References
Caraway, B. (2016). OUR Walmart: a case study of connective action. Information,
Communication & Society, 19(7), 907-920.
Correll, N., Bekris, K. E., Berenson, D., Brock, O., Causo, A., Hauser, K., ... & Wurman, P. R.
(2018). Analysis and observations from the first amazon picking challenge. IEEE
Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 15(1), 172-188.
LeCavalier, J. (2016). The rule of logistics: Walmart and the architecture of fulfillment. U of
Minnesota Press.
Newcombe, C., Rath, T., Zhang, F., Munteanu, B., Brooker, M., & Deardeuff, M. (2015). How
Amazon web services uses formal methods. Communications of the ACM, 58(4), 66-73.
Perez, S. (2019). Amazon wants to become Walmart before Walmart can become Amazon.
Retrieved from: https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/16/amazon-wants-to-become-walmart-
before-walmart-can-become-amazon/
Reich, A., & Bearman, P. (2018). Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart.
Columbia University Press.
Singh, S. (2019). Can Amazon, world's largest online retailer, crack an emerging market?.
Retrieved from: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/
can-amazon-worlds-largest-online-retailer-crack-an-emerging-market/articleshow/
23066554.cms
Yuan, M., Pavlidis, Y., Jain, M., & Caster, K. (2016, November). Walmart online grocery
personalization: Behavioral insights and basket recommendations. In International
Conference on Conceptual Modeling (pp. 49-64). Springer, Cham.
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