Walmart and its shares may have taken a dive this week, but the retail giant (and still reigning No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list) insists it'll recover nicely. In a meeting with Wall Street analysts, CEO Doug McMillon relayed his defense against rivals such as Amazon.
Walmart may have digital sales of $13B, but that's only one-sixth of Amazon's total sales. The remedy? Spend billions, integrate e-commerce with brick-and-mortar.
"First, win with stores," McMillon said, adding customers like to shop in physical stores, "and they'll want great stores." The average in-store only Walmart shopper spend $1.4k per year, while its online counterpart dishes out just $200. The customer who both ways spends $2.5k.
So Walmart plans on investing more than $2B in better integrating e-commerce with its stores. More money is going into higher wages and employee training with hopes to create a better in-store experience.
"Will it be easier for an e-commerce company to build out a massive store network and create a customer service culture at scale?" Doug says. "Or are we better able to add digital and supply chain capabilities and leverage our existing stores? We like our chances." Sounds like this burn is for you, Amazon. [Fortune]
