Last updated on August 24th, 2017 at 10:55 am
Walmart is stepping up its online ordering and delivery programs. The retailer is expanding its home delivery pilot program to Dallas and Orlando, and is partnering with Google to offer voice shopping via Google Assistant. See statements from Mike Turner, VP of ecommerce operations, and Marc Lore, president and CEO of Walmart U.S. ecommerce, below.
Your delivery has arrived…with all your Walmart goodies
By Mike Turner, VP of ecommerce operations
Your daily grind starts at 6 a.m. with a mad dash around the house as you ready the family for work and school.
Showers are taken, cereal is poured, and three different lunches, each one accounting for allergies and pickiness, are lovingly prepared and packed.
Meeting after meeting followed by countless conference calls dominate the day. When it’s all over, it’s time to arrange rides for the kids—sports, band practice and drama club are tonight. Anxiety sets in…what in the world are we going to have for dinner? Are there even groceries in the house?
As you prepare for another chaotic day tomorrow, I hope you’ll feel confident knowing that we’re all about finding new ways for you to check “grocery shopping” off your list a little faster—including making home delivery an option.
We’re working hard to find a way to get you fresh, quality groceries all while keeping a little more time on your calendar.
Last year, we began testing grocery delivery through crowd-sourced services like Uber. Here’s what we’ve learned: customers like you love the convenience of a delivery option.
So, we’re expanding our grocery delivery pilot to two more markets—Orlando and Dallas.
Here’s how it works:
To order, customers shop online or through a mobile browser at Walmart.com/grocery to build an online basket and place an order, selecting the most convenient time for the order to be delivered.
That’s when our personal shoppers get to work. Based on the delivery time, they’ll begin picking items, scanning them as they go to ensure an accurate and complete order.
Then, our team will request an Uber delivery partner to come to the store, pick up the customer’s order, and take it directly to the customer’s location.
We’ve been testing delivery in a number of ways for a while now in key markets across the country. In some areas, we’re trying general merchandise deliveries led by associates. In others, we’re testing grocery delivery using Walmart trucks and drivers. We’re working hard to find a way to get you fresh, quality groceries all while keeping a little more time on your calendar.
Tomorrow is going to look a lot like today—lots to do and not enough time to get it done. But hopefully, this expanded offering, and more like it, will speed up the shopping experience and give you back something just as precious as money—time.
Walmart, Google partner to make shopping even easier—here’s how
By Marc Lore, president and CEO, Walmart U.S. ecommerce
Most of us—myself included—lead busy lives.
Running around, going to work, picking kids up from school, making dinner and, between all of that, there’s shopping to do. Because of this, I believe our job at Walmart isn’t only about saving our customers money, but also about making shopping faster and easier.
Today, we’re announcing an exciting partnership with Google to do just that. Starting in late September, we’ll be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant—the largest number of items currently offered by a retailer through the platform.
One of the primary use cases for voice shopping will be the ability to build a basket of previously purchased everyday essentials. That’s why we decided to deeply integrate our Easy Reorder feature into Google Express. This will enable us to deliver highly personalized shopping recommendations based on customers’ previous purchases, including those made in Walmart stores and on Walmart.com. To take advantage of this personalization, customers only need to link their Walmart account to Google Express.
And, this is just the beginning. Next year, we will also leverage our 4,700 U.S. stores and our fulfillment network to create customer experiences that don’t currently exist within voice shopping anywhere else, including choosing to pick up an order in store (often for a discount) or using voice shopping to purchase fresh groceries across the country.
When it comes to voice shopping, we want to make it as easy as possible for our customers. That’s why it makes sense for us to team up with Google. They’ve made significant investments in natural language processing and artificial intelligence to deliver a powerful voice shopping experience. We know this means being compared side-by-side with other retailers, and we think that’s the way it should be. An open and transparent shopping universe is good for customers.
Our new voice shopping capability, coupled with our core value proposition, including free two-day shipping and the Pickup Discount, will give our customers a compelling new way to get what they need at low prices. We will continue to focus on creating new opportunities to simplify people’s lives and help them shop in ways they’ve not yet imagined.
