Additionally, Amazon is a lot more international than Wal-mart
How do you figure? Compare this for Amazon:
Amazon has separate retail websites for United States, United Kingdom & Ireland, France, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia, Brazil, Japan, China, India and Mexico.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
To this for Walmart:
As of January 2014, Walmart's international operations comprised 6,337 stores[1] and 800,000 workers in 26 countries outside the United States.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart
And Walmart is bigger than Amazon in the United States. I don't have numbers at hand of the EU as a whole to compare but I would be surprised if Amazon were bigger than leading grocery store chains.
You're right that Walmart is massive but Amazon is the biggest ecommerce player in the US and it's not even close. 38% Amazon to next closest Walmart at 5.8% [1]. Pre-COVID Amazon was about 44%.
Walmart is the largest company in the world by revenue (by far), at over 4.5X what Amazon pulls in. They have almost 5000 locations in the US and an extra 4000 worldwide.
They've spent the last few decades engaged in ruthless competition with small, local business, and for many, now represent the only game in town. They also have tons of exclusive arrangements with suppliers, logistics, and shipping.
I'm not a huge fan of Walmart, but they definitely are positioned to weather quite a few storms. There's no doubt that they've been slow to move to the online space, but when they really focus on it, I think we'll see a very interesting fight with them and Amazon.
Similarly (and probably off topic), Amazon is not nearly to the scale of Walmart when you look at overall sales. Walmart's overall revenue is about 5x.
It may seem like Walmart is following the footsteps of Sears, but they are not out of the game yet. They need to face the innovator's dilemma head on and do it quickly because the broader issue is their e-commerce growth rate is declining instead of accelerating and the way people shop is fundamentally changing. They need to be dominant in e-commerce to be a dominant retailer in the future.
Walmart is better positioned than anyone to take on Amazon online. Their massive distribution footprint is a huge asset they are not leveraging. They need to morph into a logistics company and announce an all-encompassing same-day delivery service. They also need to completely re-haul their web/mobile UX.
I would gladly buy from Walmart. Amazon is just a lot easier right now. In the end, Amazon is not all that differentiated and if Walmart had some strong technological leadership, they could certainly close the e-commerce gap.
A few points in refutation. I see Amazon as far ahead of Walmart in all ways that promise growth:
1) Walmart may be the biggest retailer in the US, but they don't have half of the US homes as subscribers. Amazon Prime does. I doubt Walmart.com attracts any where near as many e-tail visitors as Amazon, and I suspect the gap is widening.
2) Amazon is decades ahead of Walmart in the online shopper experience. I grit my teeth each time I visit Walmart's website. It's slow and ugly and very clumsy to navigate or search. And it hasn't gotten better after years of this.
3) Walmart's products are mostly middle-to-down-market, even online, and that doesn't seem to have changed all that much even as they've grown their e-tail efforts. Try buying a nice watch or high-end stereo equipment there. No such ceiling applies to Amazon, probably because Amazon welcomes re-sellers (which can span all market niches), while Walmart doesn't.
So I think Walmart has a long way to go to compete equally with Amazon, and isn't a comparable threat as an all 'round monopoly.
And personally, I don't hate Amazon enough to object to a monopoly threat from them the way I do Walmart. I think ill-will does matter when it comes to federal action on anti-competition. If Microsoft were as despised as AT&T was in 1984, they would be in pieces today.
Not really feeling like doing a bunch of research right now but walmart has 36% of the grocery market in this country and many local monopolies. I don't think Amazon is above 50% in any ecommerce sectors so seems pretty similar to me. Walmart also is known for the same stuff Amazon does where it bans the companies it buys from from charging less elsewhere.
Not everyone can be bought. Walmart is booming massively online right now. They've got $15 billion per year in net income to play with (7x that of Amazon), nearly half a trillion in sales, hilariously more cash flow than Amazon, as well as having 3x the retail sales of Amazon. And with the current version of Amazon on the scene, Walmart is unleashed to behave competitively in a way they haven't been able to in two decades (while Amazon is in the exact opposite position due to emotion / fear of their potential; Amazon will increasingly be watched for anti-competitive abuses).
As it stands right now, Amazon has a very serious problem brewing with Walmart's online business. It's the only serious competitive threat Amazon has seen in the last 10-15 years. Instead of seeing contracting sales, Walmart's overall retail business is actually holding its ground; and at that scale, it's an extraordinary thing; their same store sales growth has been positive for 13 straight quarters, even as Amazon has grown vastly larger in the last 3-5 years. Amazon is taking share from other retailers and they're failing to strike a meaningful blow to their biggest retail threat.
Walmart has been rapidly growing their eCommerce operation for several years, the only difference in the past this has been done via multiple smaller acquisitions per year, rather than by huge ones.
This is a bit overblown. Amazon doesn't have the retail sales of Walmart even in the US. Walmart has been able to dictate to manufactures rules for packaging and distribution for a couple decades now. Somehow we survived and now they are being disrupted. Europe may be "vulnerable" to US tech companies but it is not clear they will be as successful in China, India and other parts of the world.
Walmart is actually investing in startup ecommerce plays in brazil (where it has been established 40 years)
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