Walmart's turnaround is not reliant on becoming the second Amazon

If someone had told you two years ago that Walmart's stock price would outperform Amazon's, you would probably have thought it was a joke.

Because in the eyes of many, Amazon represents the future, while Walmart belongs to the past. But the market's answer over the past two years has been very direct: Walmart's stock price has nearly doubled in two years, not only squeezing its market value into the trillion-dollar club but also making the market willingly give it a technology growth stock valuation.

So what happened? Did Walmart finally figure out e-commerce?

In fact, they took a different path, not going head-to-head with Amazon in pure e-commerce, but integrating online and offline, with online responsible for pulling orders and stores responsible for delivering goods faster and cheaper. As store efficiency improved, the online experience naturally followed suit.

In this way, Walmart maximized the utilization of its 11,000 stores worldwide, becoming a killer weapon against pure e-commerce.

Not Competing Head-On with E-Commerce, Turning Stores into an Advantage

To be clear, Walmart is not avoiding e-commerce; it just no longer sees "doing online" as the goal. It cares more about how online and offline can cooperate, how to make it easier for customers to buy and faster for them to receive.

Many traditional retailers were most anxious about "moving offline to online." But Walmart sees clearly: in the pure e-commerce race, it won't gain an advantage by going head-to-head with Amazon.

So, it simply turned around and used its stores as nodes—ordering online, picking and shipping from stores, and local delivery. A commonly cited statistic from Walmart is that 90% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart store. You may not like it, but it's hard to deny that it's close to you.

The so-called e-commerce reaching $140 billion is not about burning money to grab traffic, but about solidifying services like "store pickup" and "same-day delivery." At the same time, it has diverted traffic to more profitable businesses: advertising through Walmart Connect. In the most recent quarter, global advertising revenue growth exceeded 20%. Retail is attractive, while high-margin advertising and membership fees (Walmart+) are profitable.

Ten Years of "Hard Work": Every Step Strengthening the Foundation

Walmart's e-commerce did not take off suddenly.

It started laying the groundwork in 2011, and in 2016, it spent $3.3 billion to acquire Jet.com, bringing in technology and talent (such as Jet.com founder Marc Lore). It wasn't until 2022 that the e-commerce business finally turned a profit.

Ten years may sound slow, but most of what it did was not very eye-catching but essential work, with the most critical part being logistics and warehousing. Since 2018, Walmart has invested billions of dollars in automated warehouses, introducing robotic equipment; it has also partnered deeply with Symbotic, planning to deploy automated systems in 42 regional distribution centers to improve pallet handling speed and throughput.

More importantly, this money is not just for online shipping. With improved warehouse and distribution efficiency, restocking in stores is also smoother. Although spending this money may not look good on the short-term profit and loss statement, over time it will become a barrier to entry.

Stores are not just for selling goods: they are also warehouses and distribution points

What makes Walmart truly impressive is that it has redefined the store. In the past, stores were responsible for display and sales; now many stores resemble forward warehouses: close to people, suitable for nearby shipping and self-pickup.

The benefits are direct: the most expensive part of e-commerce is the "last mile," and stores naturally save this cost.

Walmart has disclosed data: using stores for delivery can reduce last-mile delivery costs by at least 20%. To make this model work, it has also created a crowdsourced delivery platform similar to Uber called Spark Driver, bringing in external delivery forces to deliver from stores to homes.

Additionally, with store inventory and online inventory integrated, inventory transfers are more flexible: it becomes clearer which goods to place in stores and which to place in large warehouses.

Now, more than half of Walmart's online orders are fulfilled directly by stores. With costs down and deliveries more timely, e-commerce can continue to grow.

The purpose of using technology is to simplify, not to become a tech company

With the surge of AI, Walmart is certainly also adopting technology.

It collaborates with companies like OpenAI and Google to use generative AI in areas such as recommendations, search, and inventory management; warehouses continue to use robots to improve picking efficiency.

For example, it has launched a GenAI-based search: you no longer need to search separately for "chips" and "balloons"; you can directly input "help me plan a soccer-themed 6-year-old birthday party," and the system will provide you with a basket of product combinations. On the store side, it is also promoting electronic shelf labels (ESL), changing pricing from "possibly taking two weeks" to "a few minutes," and can use lights to prompt employees' locations for faster picking.

However, Walmart has never focused on packaging itself as a tech company. The most important thing in retail is to avoid mistakes , avoid stockouts, avoid overstocking, ensure timely delivery, and make it easy to obtain goods. By achieving these, customers will naturally vote with their feet.

Walmart has not become a second Amazon

Walmart's recent growth is not because it learned from Amazon, but because it has recombined its own advantages:

The store network, supply chain, and a bit of technology have improved efficiency. It does not pursue being "number one in e-commerce," but rather cares about how to make each order cheaper, more stable, and faster.

This approach has even attracted a group of people who previously did not shop at Walmart, such as middle-class individuals with annual incomes over $100,000. For them, while price is certainly important, saving time and convenience are equally valuable.

For traditional enterprises, this thinking is quite valuable: not every company needs to package itself as "internet-based"; a more realistic approach is often to solidify its foundation first and then decide where to add technology. As for new things like unmanned retail and AR/VR shopping, Walmart will certainly try them, but the decisive factors are still the old issues: whether the integration of online and offline is smooth, whether delivery and inventory are stable, and whether it is convenient for customers to make purchases.

As long as these continue to improve, Walmart will not lack upward space.

Source: 研外之意 Pro