Cameron Herbert
Mr. Passutto
BOH4M
February 10th, 2016
Walmart Expands Grocery Pickup Service in the GTA (summary) Walmart Canada will begin offering a full grocery shopping experience online that allows customers to pick up their groceries the day after they order them online for just $3 more than what they would pay if they picked up their groceries inside and physically shoped. On Wednesday, February 10th six stores across the GTA will offer this program as a start. One of the six stores is actually located in Woodbridge on Highway 27. With the introduction of this new shopping innovation, Simon Rodrigue, senior vice president says that this will save shoppers an hours’ worth of shopping. Walmart opened one store that used this method back in the summer of 2015 in Ottawa along with Loblaws, Longos and FreshCo. Rodrigue says that the online grocery pickup in Ottawa has been very well received by families with children, busy professionals and the elderly. This has helped Walmart attract new customers. Luckily, Walmart UK has been using a method similar to this for up to 15 years which allows Walmart Canada to adopt all the best practices and training in order to ensure the success of this new project. Once fully operational, the Walmart service will offer next day pick up, however, the first pickup date will be on February 9th. Up to six more Walmart’s will be online and operational by the end of February.
Walmart Expands Grocery Pickup Service in the GTA (Analysis) Similar to how the drive through revolutionized the fast food industry, the grocery pickup will do the same to retail stores. As hard as it is to compete in the online market, Walmart has introduced a new way of doing so that I believe will definitely take off. Websites like Amazon.com can and will put traditional brick and mortar stores out of business. However, Walmart is managing to stay in the game by offering produce and frozen goods that Amazon.com can’t. It is illogical and unsanitary to ship a customer a chicken breast and eggs because they run the risk of spoiling or getting damaged and Walmart knows that and uses its brick and mortar stores to its advantage, something Amazon.com can’t do. As someone who works at Walmart and has seen this system tested before the papers have reported, I can tell you it works well. How it works is that a package is assembled for the customer based on what they ordered online, and the following day it is put together ensuring frozen goods are assembled last or the order itself is placed in a fridge or freezer, again, all considering what is in the package. The customer then pulls up to the designated spot for them in the parking lot that is marked specially for this program, and they call a specific number for a pager that someone like me wears at all times, then, we bring their order to their car assuming their receipt matches the one we have. We then send them on their way. A decision like this will revolutionize retail stores and give them a pretty significant life line in the online shopping market that seems to be dominated by Amazon.com.
