How Walmart Keeps Reinventing Itself

Walmart is the quintessential store-based legacy retailer, offering vast product selection at low prices. It continues to innovate to attract foot traffic, such as by seeking out made-in-America merchandise, particularly local goods, that are distinctive and appeal to local or regional shoppers.

But while Walmart was growing into the world's largest store operator, along came the Internet, and with it, Amazon. Walmart's retail dominance continues in the world of bricks and mortar, but it's still working on a successful strategy to achieve big gains in online retailing. And that's where Jet.com comes in.

Walmart acquired Jet.com last year, to gain not only the site and its customers but also the e-commerce savvy of the founder, Marc Lore, who now heads all of Walmart's e-commerce operations. Lore recognizes the power of omnichannel marketing, saying: "If you don’t want to let another business cannibalize your customer, you have to let them shop whatever way they want to."

Not only is Walmart reinvigorating its online operations, it's also offering inducements to bring online shoppers into stores. Similar to the way Jet.com offers discounts for those who can wait to receive items, Walmart will offer discounts to shoppers who pick up their purchases in one of its nearby stores.

Quoting Lore: "Now they [shoppers] can either pick up and save even more money, or ship two-day for free to home, without paying for a membership." Fighting words as Walmart battles Amazon. In fact, Walmart is looking for a patent on a system to compete with Amazon's Dash buttons. Here, the hook would be automatic replenishment, without even pushing a button.