Last Updated on February 12, 2022
It’s Amazon vs Walmart in a big battle for your dollars long before Christmas shopping season arrives.
Today’s the day: two giant, but very different retailers, Amazon.com and Walmart, are launching a war of sales to compete for shoppers in a true “Christmas in July” campaign.
For Amazon.com, their “Prime Day” offers a day of special deals to customers who have signed up for Amazon Prime, a program that carries a bonus of free shipping and online movie rentals for $99 per year. Prime customers will have the opportunity to take advantage of a series of deals offered as often as every 10 minutes all day long.
Walmart, meanwhile, is kicking off a series of big sales in its stores and website for its customers as well, and it says its sales will go on for 90 days. There’s no fee to take advantage of Walmart’s deals, leading the Walmart.com’s president and CEO to make this statement:
The idea of asking customers to pay extra in order to save money just doesn’t add up to us.
It’s a curious comment coming from the member of a Sam Walton property; perhaps he has chosen to forget all about Sam’s Club, Walmart’s sister company, a large warehouse club that specifically requires shoppers to pay an annual fee of roughly $45 per year — or $100 for the “best value” — to take advantage of buy-in-bulks deals.
As The New York Times points out, the two companies have different appeals to different people. Walmart’s appeal is offering affordable prices in its 4,000 stores across Middle America, while Amazon’s customers tend to be “urbanites” who’d rather click with their mouse than push around a cart. Walmart had $405 billion in sales last year, while Amazon’s totals a “mere” $20 billion.
To most of us, assuming that pricing is equal, Walmart’s primary appeal is in getting the item we want immediately by going to the store and buying it, assuming the store has it in stock. But we not only have to push a cart, we have to deal with employees who, in some cases, act as though they aren’t any more enthusiastic about being there as we are, and provide service accordingly. Amazon, meanwhile, offers the convenience of being able to shop at home in your pajamas and having the item shipped right to your door, assuming you’re patient enough to wait for it to arrive, especially if you aren’t willing to pay a higher shipping fee for two-day shipping that prime customers get for free. And even if you are a Prime customer, you still have to wait those two days during which you could already have the item if you’d gone to the store and picked it up.
For me, this is a very black and white question to answer: I despise Walmart and love Amazon. Walmart is the antithesis or good employee management. They won’t allow the bulk of their employees to work enough hours for benefits. They are just the mindless machine who chews up smaller chains or mom-n-pop shops (which were my favourite haunts growing up). Saving money is okay, I guess, but I’m not wired that way. I buy what I like to buy, that’s that. But I have specific ideas about businesses and what makes a good business, and they don’t. (Once again, the HR thing comes to the fore…)
On the other hand, I can tell you one thing about Amazon: I’m putting at least ONE employee’s kid through college. It goes without saying we have the Amazon Prime account for our household.
As for the sale, we looked at it. The Amazon items that went out on sale were clearly the bottom-of-the-barrel items that had been clogging up the…basement level, I guess you would call it. Whenever bothered to look at Walmart, since neither of shop there. But we both were struck by the offensive timing. There is nothing accepted about how much earlier the holiday wars start.
I think they should both rethink that.
That’s a tough question, to be honest. It depends on what I’m shopping for, I guess.
I appreciate Walmart’s pricing and I don’t like buying clothing online as I can’t try it on so I’ll shop at Walmart for some things – and we get our groceries from our local Walmart.
I like shopping at Amazon because I get 2-day shipping for free (because I’m a Prime member) and I can donate a percentage of my purchase to my favorite charity. (every little bit counts) We don’t have a local book store so I tend to order books from Amazon (and yes, I am aware of the irony of that statement) and I can sometimes find hard-to-find items on Amazon that I wouldn’t be able to find locally.
So… I guess Amazon wins out with me.