Walmart started its e-commerce business during the Coronavirus Pandemic as millions of people avoided venturing into stores. The big box retailer is now doubling its ambitious e-retail goals to continue expanding online and helping customers get digital orders faster.
On Monday, Walmart announced that it would add more items and perks to its e-commerce membership program, which competes with Amazon Prime, such as: B. Same-day shipping for orders of $ 35 or more and checkout without a cashier in the Walmart app. The previously called program Unlimited delivery and focuses on groceries, rebranding Walmart Plus, adding many items that you could find at a Walmart store, including toys, electronics, and household items like cleaning supplies and toothpaste.
For more of that
Subscribe to the CNET Now newsletter to receive the most important stories of the day from our editors.
All Delivery Unlimited customers are moving to the new program, which is the same price of $ 98 per year or $ 12.95 per month. Walmart Plus, which is expected to be launched earlier this yearwill be available in the US on September 15th.
"We designed this program as the ultimate life hack," said Janey Whiteside, Walmart's chief customer officer, during a press briefing on Monday.
This reinforced membership program is set to help Walmart continue its rapid growth in e-commerce, where it has already become the second largest online seller in the US but lags far behind Amazon. Last month, Walmart, the world's largest retailer, announced that e-commerce sales nearly doubled in the most recent quarter as more customers used roadside pickup and other online services.
While this is obviously positive for the company, having spent billions of dollars on e-commerce, Walmart Plus should face harsh comparisons with Amazon Prime, a 15-year-old program over 150 million users and a much longer list of benefits. These benefits include the Prime Video library. Amazon fresh Grocery deliveries and No delivery minimum for many cheap items. Prime is a more expensive option at $ 119 a year.
"We're not launching Walmart Plus with the intention of competing with anything else," Whiteside said when asked about Prime. "We're bringing it to market to meet our customers' needs."
This isn't the first foray into a membership program Walmart has made after running the now-suspended program Shipping pass and Jetblack programs. Delivery Unlimited was also greatly expanded last fall. According to Whiteside, Walmart has learned a lot from these earlier programs and used the best parts of them for Walmart Plus.
Benefits include faster shipping, with deliveries arriving as quickly as the same day for members of 160,000 items at no additional cost. Orders must be a minimum of $ 35, the same minimum as Delivery Unlimited. Non-members currently receive free two-day delivery on millions of items over $ 35. Free same-day delivery for non-members is also possible, but only in certain zip codes.
In-store customers have access to a "Scan and Go" feature that allows them to scan items with their cell phones and pay with Walmart Pay to bypass the checkout. Walmart tested a similar one cashless technology in one Sam's club This type of contactless payment is particularly useful during the pandemic to help customers avoid touching payment terminals and other shared surfaces.
In addition, Walmart offers fuel discounts of up to 5 cents per gallon at approximately 2,000 Walmart, Murphy USA and Murphy Express fuel locations. Sam's Club Stations will be added to this list shortly.
"I think they're going to do a little more to trick people into thinking it's not a bad program right now, but not a great one," said Neil Saunders, an analyst at research firm GlobalData, on Tuesday. "If you look at Amazon Prime, it's only light years."
He added that Walmart will face an uphill battle against "subscription fatigue" as buyers have already budgeted Prime, Costco, Spotify, Netflix, and many other services.
Up to that point, Whiteside said that Walmart Plus will bring more benefits, although it has avoided offering details. She added that the program was specifically designed for the US market and declined to say if there are any plans to expand it internationally.
