What middle eastern hypermarket players still NOT Learning from Walmart?

Our middle eastern hypermarket retailers though they talk about digitization and digital transformation of their businesses on various retail forums, they lack the spirit of actioning the same.?

I feel the learning and actioning mindset is lacking amongst our hypermarket players.

Walmart team also faced similar challenges while competing with Amazon.?

As they say, competition is healthy as it prompts you to stay agile, and vigilant, and pushes you to innovate.

Walmart playing on its strength to compete with Amazon -Yes, stores are Walmart's strength.

Amazon.com commands nearly 40% of the e-commerce market in the US and Walmart’s share is a mere 7%.

Walmart understands that its strength lies in its stores which are spread out all over the US and can be utilized as a fulfillment Centre as well for faster deliveries.

Walmart has 31 fulfillment centers across the U.S. — but more than 3,500 stores, or about 75% of its total locations, fulfill online orders that would be otherwise routed through a fulfillment center.

For example, the retailer can pinpoint the nearest store to a customer who searches online for a printer.?

Instead of sending the printer from a fulfillment center hundreds of miles away, a team of personal shoppers at the store can pack it, pass that to a delivery driver in Walmart’s network and send a notification to the customer to say the product is on the way.

Resulting in better customer satisfaction.

With its infrastructure of stores,?it can reach 80% of the U.S. population with same-day delivery.?This gives a whole new perspective to Walmart for competing with Amazon.?

Walmart is standing strong to its core promise, “Everyday low prices”.

Its membership program,?Walmart+,?is another way the retailer is trying to score more online sales.?

The $98-per-year service includes free shipping of online purchases and free grocery deliveries to the home for orders of $35 or more.

Walmart is using its stores as launch pads for delivery drones and departure locations for direct-to-fridge drop-offs, and it will soon start packing and shipping third-party sellers’ goods from stores.

One of the challenge, that I foresee with Walmart’s digital initiatives, is they need to work on their “third party independent sellers”, which forms the major source of revenue for Amazon.com

The idea is to provide a platform to thousands of independent sellers with their physical stores coupled with digital prowess so that it can quickly scale an overall growth strategy based on fulfillment.

Previously, I had penned down an article on?how Walmart has evolved its Reimagined concept,?read the article here.

Unfortunately, our regional hypermarkets are way far behind their western counterparts like Lowes foods, Sainsbury, Aldi, Lidl etc.

How can the regional hypermarkets innovate?

-???????Change of mindset towards easy capital liquidity-??Scarcity is the mother of innovation. Consider a scenario wherein the cash reserves are depleted and cash flow dries up, which revenue stream can drive back the growth? Asking tough questions will provide directions to innovate.

-???????Start thinking Digitally – not only in terms of physical retail but in terms of developing innovative revenue streams. In-Home delivery could be one such service.

-???????Instead of just communicating, “A place where the world comes to shop”, look at the merchandise mix, Is your assortment really caters to the global customers? How can a hypermarket bring in more innovative newer brands onto their shelves by removing huge listing fees??

-???????Walmart understands that their customers trust them for their promise of “Everyday low prices” and hence they go to any extent to meet their promise when it comes to procurement and delivery to their customers.

In case you are a hypermarket operator or owner and want to have a bespoke strategy for scaling your business then feel free to email me at?[email protected]

You can also subscribe to my website?www.retailritesh.com

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