Since 1962, Walmart has been the de facto discount grocery chain of choice for many across the United States. While the retailer’s tagline was “Always Low Prices” for decades, it changed it to “Save Money. Live Better” in 2008. This change in messaging was likely to help the retailer transform itself to be more competitive with eCommerce companies like Amazon. Just last year, Walmart announced its acquisition of eCommerce website Jet.com and has been slowly working on upgrades to customer service options.
“We’re looking for ways to lower prices, broaden our assortment and offer the simplest, easiest shopping experience because that’s what our customers want,” said Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. “We believe the acquisition of Jet accelerates our progress across these priorities. Walmart.com will grow faster, the seamless shopping experience we’re pursuing will happen quicker, and we’ll enable the Jet brand to be even more successful in a shorter period of time. Our customers will win. It’s another jolt of entrepreneurial spirit being injected into Walmart.”
Walmart also recently announced news of its partnership with Google to offer its items for order through the voice-activated Google Home assistant, and a partnership with IBM to integrate blockchain to better track food supply and improve food safety. Additionally, the company is looking into the possible offering of installment loans on certain in-store and Walmart.com items.
Here are the numbers:
400,000 | Number of people IBM shares that die from contaminated food annually
4,700 | Number of Walmart stores in the United States
$200 | Starting point for potential Walmart installment loans
72.2 percent | Amount of voice-activated assistant market owned by Amazon Echo
22 percent | Amount of voice-activated assistant market owned by Google Home
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