June 01, 2017
Home deliveries may soon come to a Walmart near you.
The retailer announced its latest tactic this week in an ongoing push to boost its online sales and compete with electronic shopping companies such as Amazon.
Walmart plans to test delivering online orders to customers' doors, a move it says will cut shipping costs and expedite deliveries.
"It just makes sense: We already have trucks moving orders from fulfillment centers to stores for pickup," Marc Lore, chief executive of Walmart's e-commerce business and the founder of Jet.com, stated in a Thursday afternoon blog post. "Those same trucks could be used to bring ship-to-home orders to a store close to their final destination, where a participating associate can sign up to deliver them to the customer's house."
Lore said associates who take part in the initiative would earn a little extra cash on their drive home. And if they don't want to take part, they don't have to, he said.
Lore claimed the company will allow its employees to give their preferences on how many packages they want to deliver, package size and weight limits and which days they're able to make deliveries after work.
The post stated that Walmart, which has 4,700 stores across the country, will test home deliveries at three stores – two in New Jersey and one in northwest Arkansas.
"Our stores put us within 10 miles of 90 percent of the U.S. population. Now imagine all the routes our associates drive to and from work and the houses they pass along the way," Lore wrote. "It’s easy to see why this test could be a game-changer."
Lore did not give details on when, or where, it may expand across the United States.
Walmart has doubled down on its online business of late, growing its sales 63 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to the Washington Post.
The company also purchased Jet.com for $3.3 billion in 2016.
