Will Walmart+ Catch Up to Amazon Prime?

It’s been a while since we compared Amazon Prime to its latest competitor, Walmart+. Of course, other retailers have significant membership programs, notably Costco. Yet Walmart+, the membership program that Walmart created four years ago to encourage shopping at Walmart.com, comes closest to offering benefits similar to those of Amazon Prime.

On the one hand, Amazon Prime remains magnitudes larger than Walmart+. On the other hand, Walmart+ has grown recently at a rate that resembles Amazon Prime in its early years.

Earlier we estimated Amazon Prime has over 180 million US members. Membership has grown slowly but steadily in the past three years (Chart 1).