Wednesday, July 03, 2019

Inside the conflict at Walmart that’s threatening its high-stakes race with Amazon | Recode

Earlier in the article: "Amazon now accounts for nearly 38 percent of online retail in the US, up from 32 percent in 2016, according to an estimate from eMarketer. Walmart, on the other hand, accounts for just 4.7 percent, up from 2.6 percent three years ago."
"The problem is that building the online version of the Everything Store requires millions more products, and that means two things that Walmart’s current infrastructure does not support: dozens more e-commerce warehouses and a lot more merchants and brands selling through Walmart.com.

The former is mainly a cash problem. As in, you need to spend a lot of cash to build a warehouse network to rival Amazon’s. But Walmart has not secured the same trust — and long leash — from Wall Street investors that Amazon has.

Amazon, on the other hand, has literally been building out its warehouse infrastructure for two whole decades, and it can offset its losses from expensive investments via high-profit businesses like Amazon Web Services and its fast-growing advertising business."
Inside the conflict at Walmart that’s threatening its high-stakes race with Amazon | Recode

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