How Does Amazon Compete with Walmart.com?

The conventional comparison between Amazon and Walmart tends to focus on how Amazon dominates online e-commerce, while Walmart emphasizes in-store shopping. These comparisons tend to portray Amazon as the retailer of the future, while Walmart remains anchored to its 5,000 US physical locations.

Amazon does confront a challenge with Walmart’s actual stores, though. These locations give Walmart an important way to fulfill e-commerce orders, through in-store pickup. And our data shows that drives a lot of commerce.

Of course, Amazon fulfills almost all orders through delivery. Over 95% of Amazon orders are delivered to a customer’s home (Chart 1). The remainder are delivered to delivery lockers, workplaces, or other locations.

Through its Walmart.com e-commerce platform, Walmart both delivers orders to a residence or other destination, and also allows for in-store pickup. About 60% of Walmart.com orders are delivered to a residence and over one-third are picked-up at a Walmart store. A similarly small percentage of orders are delivered to other locations such as a workplace or delivery locker.