Despite added charges for faster fulfillment, customers are flocking to the retailer’s roster of quick delivery options, executives said.
Walmart is among several retailers launching and expanding faster delivery options as consumers seek convenient ways to get goods fulfilled fast, be it food, medicine or last-minute gifts.
Tapping into customer demand for faster delivery has been a core piece of Walmart's growth strategy in recent quarters, and the 30-minutes-or-less service is just one of a growing roster of options. This year, Walmart has also expanded its drone delivery partnership with Wing and brought one-hour delivery to hundreds of Sam's Club stores.
Gross merchandise value tied to fast delivery, or services making deliveries in three hours or less, grew 48% year over year for Walmart in Q2, the Walmart spokesperson said.
"Speed matters, and we have a significant competitive advantage,” Furner said. “Our physical footprint, fulfillment infrastructure, and local delivery capabilities allow us to move closer to customers while maintaining an attractive cost structure."
Faster delivery services are often more expensive. Walmart's 30-minutes-or-less offering, for example, is available for a $10 fee for members of Walmart+, the retailer’s paid benefits program. However, the retailer is still seeing customers flock to speedier services despite additional charges. Deliveries in which customers paid a fee to get the order faster made up 37% of store-fulfilled deliveries in the quarter, an all-time high, CFO John David Rainey said on the call.
Stores are becoming an increasingly important fulfillment node for Walmart, with the company seeing over 40% sales growth in store-fulfilled deliveries in Q2, Rainey said.
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