Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest grocer, so it’s no surprise that the retail giant is piloting a variety of ways to make online ordering part of your routine for stocking your pantry and fridge. The company is testing home grocery delivery and even an option in which you can pick up pre-ordered groceries from a temperature-controlled truck in, say, your office park or neighborhood.
But of all these experiments, the retailer says it’s gaining particular traction with an option that allows customers to place orders online and then pick them up curbside at a nearby Wal-Mart store.
That’s why the retailer announced this week that it is expanding that store pick-up program to eight additional markets, a bet that this hybrid digital-physical shopping experience is one of Wal-Mart’s best paths for competing in the crowded online grocery business. In fighting for shoppers’ dollars with the likes of Google Express, Amazon Fresh and several smaller start-ups, Wal-Mart is trying to take advantage of its massive network of 4,597 U.S. stores to gain an edge over the online-only efforts.
Wal-Mart’s free pick-up program is rolling out in Atlanta, Nashville, Tucson, Charlotte, and other metropolitan areas in the coming weeks, and the company pledges that it will add even more markets soon. The prices shoppers pay for their curbside groceries will be the same as what they’d pay in a Wal-Mart brick-and-mortar store, and orders placed before 10 a.m. are eligible to be picked up the same day.
Michael Bender, Wal-Mart’s global e-commer chief operating officer, says that the option has been especially popular with busy moms.
“It allows the customer to engage with the brand along the pattern of the way that they live their lives,” Bender said. “You contrast that to a delivery model where you’re essentially tethered to your home for whatever period of time that’s attached to that delivery window,” Bender said, and some customers might find picking the order up themselves to be more efficient.
Wal-Mart stores will employ workers it calls “personal shoppers” who will be tasked with packing these orders. In many cases, that won’t increase the store’s staff, but instead will change the responsibilities of some Wal-Mart workers.
Wal-Mart will face plenty of challenges as it aims to build its grocery pickup business. This category has been notoriously hard to crack on the Web; in fact, last year, a measly 1.9 percent of total grocery sales took place online. And it’s not clear yet whether this will simply change the buying process for existing customers or whether it will actually bring incremental spending and new shoppers to Wal-Mart’s grocery business.
In its early days, the retailer has seen 85 percent of pickup customers end up becoming repeat users, which suggests that if it can convince people to give it a try, it has a good shot of making them converts.
(Amazon chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
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