Analyzing Walmart's Online Retail and Service Strategies: A Report

This report analyzes Walmart's online retail strategy, focusing on its competitive positioning against Amazon and other online retailers. It identifies Walmart's key assets, including its extensive physical store network, robust distribution infrastructure, and private transportation workforce. The report examines Walmart's e-commerce strategy, highlighting its cross-channel content plan and multi-channel approach to enhance customer experience. It explores Walmart's perspective on channel conflict, its decision to in-source its online operations, and its acquisition of Jet.com. Furthermore, the report compares Walmart's fulfillment operations with Amazon's, detailing differences in the number of third-party sellers, fulfillment centers, and shipping strategies. The analysis draws on academic sources to provide a comprehensive understanding of Walmart's online retail strategies and their effectiveness in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Running head: ONLINE RETAIL AND SERVICES
Online Retail and Services
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note:

2ONLINE RETAIL AND SERVICES
1. What are the three key assets that Walmart can leverage (build on) to compete with
Amazon and the other online retailers?
The three different types of assets that Walmart influences for competing with the online
retailers are as followings:
o Having the largest physical store in the United States of America, Walmart is connected
with the clients both in online and the offline modes. The gas stations provide a large
portion of revenue for this organization.
o Walmart has the biggest retail distribution network considering their huge warehouses
where they manage their products. The overhead costs of this organization are lower than
the other online retailers such as Amazon.
o This business organization have the biggest private transportation workforce.
2. What is Walmart’s e-commerce strategy?
Cross channel content plan is used as the e-commerce strategy for improving the user
experience of this organization. Resources and communication channels are used by this
organization in an efficient manner in its e-commerce strategy. A multi-channel strategy is
adopted by this retailing organization as it helps them to maintain a holistic shopping
experience (Pawluczuk 2017). The customers can assess the wide variety of items with the
help of the multi-channel e-commerce strategy adopted by Walmart as this helps the clients
to shop in both offline and online modes.

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3. Why isn’t Walmart worried about the channel conflict between its online sales and
its store sales?
Conflict between its store sales and online sales Walmart is considered to be insignificant
for the management team of this organization. Online stores are useful as all the products are
not available in offline mode which are available in the online modes. Every online customer
of Wall mart is considered to be part of the operation One Walmart, they need to go online in
the official portal of the organization and search for their items. This business organization is
very proud of their business strategy as they had no issues with the store sales and the online
sales of this organization (Marinkovic, Gatalica, and Rakicevic 2016). They do not consider
the online store and the physical stores two separate entities as both of them can raise
significant revenue for this organization, the upward trending of the global retail and the e-
commerce sales forecast proves the effectiveness of their business strategy.
4. Why is Walmart in-sourcing the department of its online operation, in part by
acquiring technology companies rather than outsourcing development to low cost
countries and domestic firms?
Capabilities and new skills are always accepted in the working environment of this business
organization. The capability and skills of the stakeholders of this business organization can be
used to increase the business reach of the organization. The skills of the labour force are utilized
by this organization rather than outsourcing from low cost countries (Hirogaki 2015). New
services can be implemented in this business organization with the help of new and advanced
technology. The skills of the labour force of this business organization is rebuild and used for the
growth and development of the organization itself.

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5. Why did Walmart acquire Jet.com?
Walmart acquitted Jet.com for approximately $3 billion cash in the year 2016, the
business models followed in Walmart was introduced in the working environment of Jet.com.
The main objective of Walmart to have the ownership of Jet.com is to have a new set of
consumers, however, initially they faced few issues considering the organizations but their
transparency is very much effective to regain their hopes of getting new clients.
6. How does Walmart's fulfilment operation differ from Amazon's?
The fulfilment operation of Walmart is very much different from Amazon as Walmart have
an increasing number of rooster of retailers than Amazon. This business organization have more
technologies to support more sellers. The fulfilment of the consumers is focused by Walmart and
modification in the third-party fulfillments are done in such a way that there are no disruptions in
business operations. Both Amazon and Walmart have their competition among themselves over
the fulfilment operations provided by each of the organization (Upadhyaya 2016). Lucrative
offers are there in both the fulfilment operation units of the two organizations. The shipping
information's are purchased in Amazon with the help of the Amazon's buy shipping tool as no
login issues are required for the consumers of Walmart to have the fulfilment schemes. There are
about 3000 third-party sellers of Walmart as numerous new sellers are added on a monthly basis
whereas there are 2 million third-party sellers for Amazon. The fulfilment centre of Amazon is
the Merchant Fulfillment Network whereas Walmart has about 4500 stores.

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Reference
Pawluczuk, A., 2017. INNOVATION IN THE SHOPPING PROCESS IN THE
HYPERMARKET. In Economic and Social Development (Book of Proceedings), 26th
International Scientific Conference on Economic and Social (p. 731).
Upadhyaya, R., 2016. Empathy of Customer Relationship Management in Emerging Retail
Sector. International Journal of Business Insights & Transformation, 9(2).
Hirogaki, M., 2015. Key factors in successful online grocery retailing: empirical evidence from
Tokyo, Japan. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 26(2), pp.139-153.
Marinkovic, S., Gatalica, B. and Rakicevic, J., 2016, December. New technologies in commerce
and sharing economy. In Toulon-Verona Conference" Excellence in Services".