Walmart has made another big move, and Amazon's dominant position is under attack!

Walmart 's competition with Amazon in online shopping and shipping is heating up, and Amazon may lose its dominance in e-commerce as Walmart transforms its stores into a powerful logistics network.

To explain why this is said, we have to mention that Walmart unveiled its first "market fulfillment center" in Bentonville, Arkansas to the public at the end of last month.

Similar to an important fulfillment center in New Jersey , Walmart's compact in-store warehouse also has an automated pickup system . Called Alphabot , the system is centered around a mobile robot that can move along stacked inventory shelves to store or retrieve products . Alphabot can be operated by one or two people.

In addition, more and more customers are choosing Walmart delivery and in-store pickup, and this demand is the driving force behind the development of Walmart's e-commerce . This also coincides with Walmart's needs. In order to maintain efficient expansion, the company has been hoping to increase the number of its online orders and has been working hard to improve its order fulfillment speed .

Walmart has been building a fleet of independent drivers over the past five years through its " Spark Driver " program. The program is similar to Amazon's also five-year-old Delivery Partner program and offers gig opportunities similar to Uber Eats and Instacart . Amazon's Delivery Partner program currently has 275,000 employees, but Walmart does not disclose how many drivers its fleet currently has.

Walmart is also working to expand its drone delivery program to speed up delivery of smaller orders , which has completed more than 10,000 orders in the past year . In contrast, Amazon's drones have only completed 100 deliveries since they were launched a few months ago .

As of the end of January this year, Walmart already had 3,900 instant delivery points. Currently, the trend of online purchases and in-store pickup is on the rise, and even under inflationary pressure, grocery sales, which account for 60% of Walmart's US sales, remain strong.

Overall, Walmart has enough power to make Amazon nervous, especially as the e-commerce giant struggles with its own brick-and-mortar retail strategy.

Walmart

Amazon

Logistics Network