Some random thoughts on the current state of E-commerce. As I mentioned over a year ago, Jet.com didn’t make too much sense as a contender. Yea, they can start discounting and use buzzwords like algorithms but at the end of the day, is Jim buying those shoes or not.
Turns out they had a great exit with Walmart, which is great for them. But where does this leave Walmart? Did they really need to spend $3b to buy what amounts to some software? Is the $3b a customer acquisition cost? It seems like Walmart is doing their best to appear as they are fighting the Amazon beast, but is it working?
Here are 2 separate recent anecdotes:
Jet is heavily marketing a 15% coupon for the first 3 orders a new customer makes, great. Put in an order at prices similar to Amazon, get an extra 15% off and in this users case, the product was fulfilled by a 3rd party vendor. Unbeknownst to the user when purchasing, the order was routed to another seller. Then the order was put in a queue for 7 delivery days. Delivered. All is well in the world.
On the Amazon front, in trying to get an FBA freight order into Amazon, a rep had to call and push the delivery out a week because there is so much freight arriving they cannot handle it and need extra time so there are truckloads piling up outside of FBA facilities.
How do you compete with Amazon? For a Prime user, all the added benefits of Amazon Video, Music, 2 day shipping, Audio and more..
Not sure how this will all end, but hoping Walmart comes up with a plan as monopolies are never good for anyone.