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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Walmart and Google Pushes an Online Boost

Thoughtful podcast, but I think the final para here misunderstands Wal-Mart's customers, they are more sophisticated and widespread than they think.

Will Walmart’s Partnership with Google Give It an Online Boost?
Walmart has been going all out in the past year to grow its e-commerce business, and the latest move is a partnership with Google that it announced last week. According to Walmart, beginning in late September, it will offer customers “hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant” – the largest number of items from a single retailer available on the Google Express online shopping platform. While the Google partnership will certainly help Walmart drive online sales, it promises limited gains and doesn’t seem to be part of a larger e-commerce strategy, according to experts.

The stakes in the online shopping game are constantly rising, especially when it comes to taking on Amazon – which, with its recent acquisition of Whole Foods Market, is now encroaching on Walmart’s brick-and-mortar territory. “People feel competing against Amazon is a very tough proposition, and I want to see competition there,” said Wharton marketing professor Barbara Kahn.

According to Mark A. Cohen, director of retail studies and adjunct professor at Columbia Business School, the deal “doesn’t necessarily lead anywhere…. The intersection of Walmart’s customer base and Google’s users is so small that this is likely to be insignificant.”  ... ' 

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