Internet retail giant Amazon calls Tuesday Prime Day, which sounds like the holiday of Mayan sacrifice but is in fact simply a celebration of buying more things faster.
It’s Amazon’s answer to Black Friday. Devised last summer, Prime Day offered thousands of deals for members of Amazon Prime—the company’s two-day delivery service—and became, at the time, the busiest shopping day in the company’s history.
Naturally, lumbering up behind Amazon like an ogre awakened from the sweet sleep that follows a feast of mom-and-pop businesses is Walmart. The world’s largest company (by revenue) is offering free shipping all week to all shoppers in an effort to challenge Amazon’s online dominance. As I wrote last month, Walmart’s e-commerce efforts have floundered:
Over the past two years, Walmart’s digital growth has been on a steady downward trajectory, from 20 percent growth rates in 2014 down to 10 percent, 8 percent, and 7 percent in the past three quarters.
That’s way out of step with the rest of the retail sector. Target’s digital sales rose 23 percent in the first quarter of 2016. U.S. retail sales grew 2.2 percent between the first quarters of 2015 and 2016, but e-commerce growth was at 15.2 percent during the same period, according to the Census Bureau—more than twice Walmart’s own performance.
A week of free shipping is Walmart’s latest effort to lure customers away from Amazon. Since Walmart offered a 30-day free trial of ShippingPass last month, the company says, sign-ups for the two-day free shipping program—which is half the cost of Amazon Prime—have quadrupled. The free shipping this week does not require ShippingPass sign-up. “We believe saving money every day is better than just one, and that all customers should save, not only some,” Walmart said in a statement provided to Reuters.
Baby powder to the people!
