Walmart Eyes Stores as Warehouse Space for Same-Day Delivery

The company has begun testing the use of shelves in the back rooms of its stores as a staging location for same-day, third-party merchandise delivery, the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (April 19), citing sources familiar with the project. 

The FT frames this effort as a challenge to Amazon, which offers third-party sellers delivery as quickly as the same day via its order fulfilment service. 

A source with knowledge of Walmart’s campaign says the experiments are happening at several stores in Dallas, a city that has served as a test space for new Walmart tech in the past.

“Starting in a few markets, we’ll soon be offering a select assortment of marketplace items through the pickup and delivery experience customers already know and love. It’s an intentional test that will help us learn and scale over time,” Manish Joneja, senior vice president of Walmart U.S. Marketplace and Walmart Fulfillment Services, told the FT.

According to the report, most of Walmart’s online sales come from first-party merchandise, or products in its own inventory. The sales floors of its Supercenter stores normally carry roughly 120,000 individual products, including groceries, apparel and electronics. 

Walmart debuted its online marketplace in 2009. During a recent industry conference, John David Rainey, chief financial officer, said revenues are growing at around 20% each year. He added that categories such as home, hardlines and fashion, are growing at a rate greater than 30%.

“These are areas that we’ve been a little weaker in on a relative basis,” Rainey said of the fastest-growing categories. “We’ve talked about the need to grow our general merchandise assortment. This is a great opportunity to do that.”

However, the FT report cited data from eMarketer showing that U.S. sales on Walmart’s marketplace platform were less than $14 billion last year, compared to $483 billion for the company’s total net sales and $333 billion for Amazon’s U.S. marketplace.

Meanwhile, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that in the battle between Walmart and Amazon, the former company has an edge when it comes to attracting high-stress shoppers.

“Among online grocery shoppers under high financial stress, 56% made their most recent purchase at Walmart, versus 50% of low-stress shoppers,” PYMNTS wrote last week.

“In stores, the gap is even more striking: 37% of high-stress grocery shoppers last bought at Walmart, compared with 26% of low-stress shoppers.”

Dollar Tree has also gained ground among stressed in-store retail consumers, “reinforcing the idea that shoppers are actively seeking merchants tied to lower prices and tighter control over spending,” that report added.