Something really interesting is happening with Wal-Mart

https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/08/19/walmarts-ecommerce-investments-are-paying-off.aspx

They posted 40% online sales growth last quarter

Plan on reading pretty much the entire Montley Fool article

How is it doing all this? The new Click & Collect experience.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/walmarts-stock-price-e-commerce-business-grows-faster-than-amazons-2018-8-1027471160

What does this mean?

1) Wal-mart is working to maintain it's corner of retail shopping. That being the world of groceries

2) Groceries from a logistics perspective is the hardest part of transitioning to online retail. Which means if Wal-mart continues to do this well, the next step to non-grocery goods will be much easier to accomplish for them at scale

3) Which means Amazon will have real competition

4) Grocery pickup is a massive user experience improvement. While it's not as good as delivery, it's incredibly more efficient than the traditional way of buying your groceries.

5) Nobody is better positioned than Walmart to absolutely dominate the grocery pickup and/or delivery service

6) Yes Amazon ownes this space right now.. 49% of all ecommerce retail spend is on Amazon! But… Ecommerce retail spend only represents about 10% of all retail spend. That other 90% is happening offline. And Walmart is best positioned to usher in a big share of that if they continue down this path.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-commerce-market-is-now-49-or-5-of-all-retail-spend/

What does this have to do with digital marketing?

1) I believe Walmart will become an online sellers paradise soon. Similar to Amazon's Seller Central

2) Walmart and Google are going to continue to work together to compete with Amazon. #mutualinterests

- Back in August of last year (2017) Google and Walmart partnered to integrate walmart products with the Google Assistant (voice search)

https://blog.walmart.com/innovation/20170823/walmart-google-partner-to-make-shopping-even-easier-heres-how

https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/shop-walmart-and-more-your-favorite-stores-faster/

- Back in March, Walmart and Google partnered on google's new feature called Shopping Actions.

https://www.cpcstrategy.com/blog/2018/03/google-shopping-actions-program/

https://mashable.com/2018/03/19/google-walmart-shopping-vs-amazon/#hn_qTL_G_sqt

- In July of this year, Walmart partnered with Waymo (a subsidiary of Alphabet a.k.a google). Waymo has launched a test program in Arizona for Walmart for self-driving grocery delivery.

https://mashable.com/2018/07/25/waymo-walmart-partnership-amazon-google/#4zPAvEP6_qqb

- But the partnership between Walmart and Google has much more significance for both companies:

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/302243

- Oh yeah = back in 2016 this happened

https://news.walmart.com/2016/08/08/walmart-agrees-to-acquire-jetcom-one-of-the-fastest-growing-e-commerce-companies-in-the-us

3) This partnership between the two will help you greatly if you are a Walmart.com seller. #thinkaboutit