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Businesses The Almighty Buck

People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart (nytimes.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Amazon has eclipsed Walmart to become the world's largest retail seller outside China, according to corporate and industry data, a milestone in the shift from brick-and-mortar to online shopping that has changed how people buy everything from Teddy Grahams to teddy bears. From a report: Propelled in part by surging demand during the pandemic, people spent more than $610 billion on Amazon over the 12 months ending in June, according to Wall Street estimates compiled by the financial research firm FactSet. Walmart on Tuesday posted sales of $566 billion for the 12 months ending in July. Alibaba, the giant online Chinese retailer, is the world's top seller. Neither Amazon nor Walmart is a dominant player in China.

In racing past Walmart, Amazon has dethroned one of the most successful -- and feared -- companies of recent decades. Walmart perfected a thriving big-box model of retailing that squeezed every possible penny out of its costs, which drove down prices and vanquished competitors. But even with all of that efficiency and power, the quest to dominate today's retail environment is being won on the internet. And no company has taken better advantage of that than Amazon. Indeed, the company's delivery (many items land on doorsteps in a day or two) and wide selection first drew customers to online shopping, and it has kept them buying more there ever since. It has also made Jeff Bezos, the company's founder, one of the richest people in the world.
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People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart More

People Now Spend More at Amazon Than at Walmart

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  • Questions... (Score:3)

    by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @07:31PM (#61703029)

    1. Does this have anything to do with COVID?
    2. Does this incentivize Amazon to ensure COVID continues?

    • 1: yes

      2: LOL

    • Shipping takes so long these days, even if they huff and puff into every package, the virus will die in transit.

  • Walmart just has a ton more real competitors. Amazon doesn't have many real competitors. When amazon selling more than all brick and mortar it will be news. Why exclude china? China is a huge part of the global economy why should any statistics matter that don't include china?
    • Why exactly aren't Walmart's competitors (since you took no issue with Walmart and Amazon being looked at as competitors) not Amazon's competitors?

      • Re:Competitors... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @07:43PM (#61703061)

        Why exactly aren't Walmart's competitors (since you took no issue with Walmart and Amazon being looked at as competitors) not Amazon's competitors?

        Walmart had few real competitors that were as smart / pervasive as they were. Sears? Puh-leeze. K-Mart? More of the same. Woolworths'? Died sometime in the 90's.

        Mom and Pop Jones downtown, purveyors of fine whatevers? Can't compete on price. Was late to get on the 'net. Dead now.

        Walmart killed them off. Which is why I will not bat an eyelash when a bigger, badder fish continues to eat away at Walmart. I don't care how bad the world thinks that bigger fish is, Walmart has to pay for destroying so many business and livelihoods over the decades.

        • > Walmart had few real competitors that were as smart / pervasive as they were. Sears? Puh-leeze. K-Mart? More of the same. Woolworths'? Died sometime in the 90's. Failed competitors doesn't mean they weren't "real competitors". Target, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Kroger, Publix, Macy's, Best Buy, etc ALL compete against Walmart. > Which is why I will not bat an eyelash when a bigger, badder fish continues to eat away at Walmart. I don't care how bad the world thinks that bigger fish is, Walmart ha

        • Are you sure Mom & Pop didn't invest in WMT or AMZN shares? Maybe that is how 1 in 10 american household have a net worth of over $1 million? I am pretty sure the biggest shareholders of Walmart also own shares of Amazon -- because that's investing 101. If Walmart goes down, a lot of people will lose their job, but do you think the Walmart executives will be broke? At worst their ego will be bruised, but they will still have be OK. Do you think the ex-CEOs of Sears or K-mart are in the poor house? Uh, y

        • > Mom and Pop Jones downtown, purveyors of fine whatevers? Can't compete on price.

          Well, not in Germany.

          Here, Walmart tried that shit, of selling at a price lower than the price they bought goods at, to kill those small stores. And the stores sued ... and won. (No surprise to anyone.)

          On top, to us, their company culture was as creepy as a cult. (Cheering "WALMART!" in the morning? Greeters? Mandatory smiles? Are you serious?) Not to forget outright illegal. (Snitching on others who didn't force-smile once

        • I've shopped at Wally World exactly one (1) time in my life. When I was given a gift card.

          There are other stores. And those other stores have the regular item, the real thing, not the Wally World special cheaper version. Same SKU, different product.

          The problem with buying on Amazon, you don't know if you'll get the regular one, or the Wally World one, since they have the same product code.

          You thought Woolworths died of Wally World??! Really? That's really what you remember?

          Sears died to a combination of Ama

    • I find this a strange take. Walmart is a real competitor to Amazon. And any competitors to Walmart's is a competitor to Amazon's. Very few products are fundamentally different just because of the channel with which they distribute goods to customers -- basically just perishables or individually-unique items (handcrafted items, or to some degree selections of produce). Furthermore, even if they are completely different, why would it matter for the purposes of this comparison? There's no particular reaso

  • To get to the comments on this story I had to click on the Technology link. That's because the hyperlink on the main page has an error.

  • Walmart will always be around and have an advantage on price unless drone delivery is in the picture. Without automated drone delivery, there is no way to price compete with brick & mortar. It takes about 10 or more minutes of someone's time to deliver something to you specifically. At $30 an hour, that is $5. How is it cost-effective to spend $5 to deliver something that costs $20? Granted the model isn't as fucked as food delivery, but still it's pretty F'd without drone delivery.

    • Indeed, I'd still say Walmart is more a threat to Amazon than Amazon is to Walmart. Rivaling Walmart's physical presence is nigh-on impossible, whereas Walmart has been doing a better of job rivaling Amazon's online presence in recent years. And with its still-huge retail business to fuel it, Walmart can keep developing its online business basically forever.

      However I don't agree with your assertion that individualized delivery is needed to compete with brick & mortar. Same day is good enough. That

      • Re:Delivery (Score:5, Insightful)

        by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @08:21PM (#61703141)

        [Same day delivery] is something Walmart can sometimes do for me thanks to its stores, whereas Amazon never has.

        Your experience must be an outlier. I have never gotten less than 3-day deliver with Walmart, despite having a supercenter five minutes away from my house. Walmart's strategy, at least where I live, is to move more and more stuff to online-only purchasing, with shipping usually coming from out of state. That is Amazon's strength, and Walmart is going to lose that war.

        Moreover, Amazon is building new distribution centers around the world (we just got a new very close to my house). These things are massive, and make Walmart's supercenters look like a mom-and-pop operation. This puts Amazon in a position to offer same-day (or better) delivery. Walmart seems to be moving in the other direction, willingly sacrificing their main advantage.

        Walmart's delivery apparatus is still in a birthing phase, whereas Amazon has created a mostly streamlined process. Amazon has a HUGE head start, and Walmart has quite a bit of ground to make up.

        My opinion is that Amazon is an existential threat to Walmart.

        • Re:Delivery (Score:4, Interesting)

          by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Tuesday August 17, 2021 @09:25PM (#61703259)
          Come to think of it, I have been to one business that points to how Amazon could use those warehouses to put the hurt on Walmart. The facility is primarily a warehouse for internet orders - customers aren't allowed in the main area. But up front there is a little storefront, and you can buy something and it comes out on a conveyor belt a few minutes later. (It's the rockymountainatvmc.com warehouse in Payson UT.) That model would allow people to shop at Amazon warehouses without messing up all the robots zooming around efficiently inside.
          • Sounds like a long gone retailer. Service merchandise. The whole store was a sales floor of demo products. You'd pick up a slip and write down your items. Think the way Ikea works. Then goto the register, hand them the slip. Pay for your purchase. And 5-10min later your order came out on a conveyor belt from the back stock room.

        • Sams club is part of this picture. Far as their stores, they're not really set up to be distribution centers. Amazon is pure distribution all the way through, except for it's acquisitions. e.g. Whole Foods, etc.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          What is Walmart like for quality and service though?

          If you buy a "Samsung battery" from Walmart will you definitely get a real Samsung part or will it be an Amazon-style knock off? And if it is a knock off and you try to return it, what is the process like?

          • I've started buying computer components from Bestbuy rather than Amazon because I don't trust Amazon to not deliver counterfeit goods. Moreover the delivery is generally faster and I can actually reach a person when I run into issues. I'd stopped buying stuff at Bestbuy in the early 2000s but things have changed.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gmack ( 197796 )

        whereas Walmart has been doing a better of job rivaling Amazon's online presence in recent years.

        It really hasn't. I tried Walmart's ordering system and they just don't have the same customer service as Amazon. Case in point: I ordered a dishwasher with delivery and their response was to drop it in the mail leaving me to drive out and pick it up at the post office(too heavy for delivery). Amazon would have used a delivery service that could have handled the heavier package. The best part is that they A: Had no idea why I was upset about that and B: blocked me when I persisted in complaining. To thi

    • Without automated drone delivery, there is no way to price compete with brick & mortar. It takes about 10 or more minutes of someone's time to deliver something to you specifically. At $30 an hour, that is $5. How is it cost-effective to spend $5 to deliver something that costs $20?

      I don't know how cost effective it is for Amazon (given their profits and market cap I think they are doing OK), but it is cost effective for me. A decade ago I never would have bought small purchases online - as kind of the inverse of your question, how cost effective is it for me to pay $20 to ship a $5 item?

      Free shipping (with Prime it is even reasonably fast) makes buying a five or ten dollar item online worthwhile. Once you no longer need the local convenience of the big box for small stuff, not m

    • Drone delivery is a Muskism. (An idea that looks flashy and high-tech, but is a fraud and a train wreck in real life, and most likely will never exist like that, and if it does, it will only in stupid newly-rich dictator places like Dubai. Like the Hyperloop.)

      Drone delivery will never be a normal thing. Too inefficient, to unsafe, too unwelcome.
      A normal truck does the job just fine.

  • ..or in other words - not the worlds largest.

    • Alibaba derived/affilated companies dominate China. Individually they are all much smaller than Amazon, but there are several big ones. Cumulatively hard to say, I'm not a financial whiz.

      I buy stuff from Aliexpress now and then myself. Between that, Amazon and eBay, there is really not much you can't find online.

  • Sears and JC Penny (Score:3)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @01:46AM (#61703691) Homepage Journal

    What amazes me is that these two catalog giants who had in place all the warehousing, order fulfillment and processing infrastructure completely missed the Internet.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      Brobably because management at said companies where to late to the internet party because they did not want to canibelise their prick and mortar buisness if they had one
  • Well, where and how would you rather shop? Your living room or? And not just WalMart or Amazon for example; I needed two 1 pound block's of buffing compound the other day. No local places carry it, WalMart does not carry it in store, Amazon does have it (made in China) for $32, delivered. PJ Tool and Supply does, (made in USA) for $24. Amazon might and only might have been one day quicker for delivery. But I could wait for that one extra day to save $8. I do try to shop local and there is a local dealer o
  • Both Amazon and Walmart fall into the trap of providing cheap Chinese crap. The difference is that Walmart is a tad more honest and they aren't price gouging hair gel at 3x retail or something. (And yet people still buy this shit from Amazon.) And with Amazon, you just gotta love stuff like the complete crap USB-C cables that they sell, most of which is probably shipped direct from Wuhan pre-infected with COVID-21, the latest engineered "novel" strain. ;)

  • I have lost count the number of times my family and I have gone into a Walmart (or other physical stores) for an item, only to run into inventory issues--either they don't have what we need, or they do, but the item has already been opened, or not enough? For clothing, it seems they NEVER had our sizes in stock.

    This was even before the human malware of 2020 exacerbated the issue.

    Every single time when my wife would get angry, I'd tell her "They are catering to the average, and there is absolutely nothing w

  • Several years ago, I needed a set of plastic furniture risers. I drove to walmart, looked where I thought they should be, no luck. Spent the next 45 minutes being led around the store by various walmart associates and third-level managers. Finally they found the place in the store where they should be, and determined that they were all sold out, and they didn't know when they would get more. My next stop was Amazon. The time it took me to type what I was looking for, find one that looked good with good

  • So ... (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    ... Amazon carries ammunition now?

    • ... Amazon carries ammunition now?

      I wish. Might want to try bulkammo.com or cheaperthandirt.com. I did find it very strange when I ordered a case of 9mm a few years ago and come home to find it unceremoniously left on my porch with labelling clearly identifying it as ammunition.

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