Walmart Rolls Out Faster Deliveries for 3rd-Party Sellers

Walmart is offering faster delivery times for marketplace orders in its continuing eCommerce battle with Amazon.

The retail giant announced Tuesday (Aug. 26), that its fulfillment service, which provides storage and shipping services for its third-party marketplace vendors, will now begin offering next-day delivery in a number of major U.S. cities, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Atlanta among them.

Walmart’s aim is “to deliver the speed that customers expect,” Manish Joneja, senior vice president of Walmart US marketplace and fulfillment services, said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

The service will cover some of the website’s most popular items, with Walmart planning to continue expanding next-day deliveries to additional areas, he added.

The new shipping offering is part of a broad range of offerings announced by Walmart’s “Let’s Grow! Walmart Marketplace Seller Summit” designed to promote seller growth.

For example, the company is debuting seller incentives to help merchants compete during the peak shopping season and land more business. These incentives include a 0% referral fee on all qualifying toys, a 50% referral fee reduction on qualifying pet supplies, and referral fee reductions of up to 100% qualifying top-selling items across categories.

Walmart also announced two new artificial intelligence-powered tools: a listing tool designed to reduce time to market and increase conversion rates, and a Smart Assistant that offers sellers real-time assistance around the clock.

Other new offerings announced at the event include a Seller Advisors Program that enables sellers to provide feedback to Walmart leaders, a tool that automates delivery promises for sellers who self-fulfill, and a brand portal meant to ensure product authenticity.

In its new Cypress, Texas, location, Walmart added a Marketplace aisle that allows customers to see select items on display and order them through the Walmart app.

These new offerings come amid Walmart’s “two-front war” with Amazon, as PYMNTS described it earlier this month.

“One front is software. Who can build the smartest artificial intelligence agent to guide shopping behaviors?” that report said. “The other is logistics. Who can deliver faster, cheaper and more conveniently?”

This is happening against the backdrop of a deep shift in retail innovation, shifting its focus from eCommerce platforms and omnichannel strategies, to “intelligent, adaptive and anticipatory commerce ecosystems where customer intent is inferred, not declared, and where logistics is not a back-end operation but a real-time, AI-optimized service,” the report added.

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence has found that during Prime Week, Walmart surpassed Amazon in same-day delivery performance. Among grocery-only customers, 48% used same-day delivery with Walmart, compared 36% for Amazon. For same-day mixed grocery and non-grocery orders, Walmart was head of Amazon, 41% to 39%.

Beyond that, 21% of Walmart’s grocery-only shoppers chose to go with in-store or curbside pickup instead of delivery, which was an option used under 2% of Amazon’s grocery shoppers.

“This data underscores Walmart’s incumbent omnichannel advantage due to its stores and fulfillment strategy,” PYMNTS wrote. “Walmart’s hybrid model, mixing store fulfillment, curbside pickup and home delivery, gives it an edge in instant convenience. Amazon, by contrast, is more heavily reliant on centralized home delivery.”

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