As the pandemic continues, Walmart’s e-commerce sales jump 97 percent

The pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the world, crippling businesses due to increasing unemployment, drastically low demands, and interruptions to logistics. As businesses fail to get a hold of the situation, there’s one company that’s showing tremendous results and turning numerous profits by utilizing the benefits of trading online. Walmart has time and again proven itself to be a high-quality company that manages to offer great value for money. Their unique business strategies and long-standing loyal customers have once again helped them not just stay afloat during the pandemic but increase their US sales by 97 percent. This has also helped Walmart stabilize its position on the NYSE.
Investments in online grocery services have paid off handsomely
Rapidly shifting to trading online (or e-commerce) and continuing to provide online grocery pickup and delivery services have helped Walmart increase their numbers of online orders tremendously. As people continue to stay indoors and look for more options in e-commerce, Walmart took advantage of this fact and made use of trading online. Regular orders for grocery items and bulk orders from people stocking up on household supplies has been a major contributing factor in helping Walmart jump their Q2 US sales by 97 percent. This is a massively impressive feat to be accomplished in the current scenario where several other big companies are failing to create enough demand for their products.
To accommodate the growing demand, Walmart offers 3,450 for quick grocery pickups. All you need to do is place the order online and go pick-up your order from these pickup spots. This prevents people from crowding and violating any social distancing norms. However, for the people who do not want to venture out even for household or grocery supplies, Walmart added 2,730 same-day delivery options. Using this, Walmart has enabled people from receiving all their supplies by sitting in the safe comfort of their own house. The popularity and demand for these services increased tremendously. To accommodate this, Walmart has added a 30 percent expansion to its time slots.
Walmart is looking to further build on the gains from trading online
Seeing as to how curbside pickup and home deliveries of grocery and general merchandise fueled Walmart’s sales in this quarter, Walmart now wishes to build further on this. They are looking to start a membership service that is expected to be named Walmart+. Other than collecting valuable customer data, this program will also enable customers to get speed deliveries in record time.
Regarding the speculations around Walmart+, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said, ‘We think that assortment breadth and our ability to deliver with speed nationally combined with a few other benefits for customers will result in a compelling proposition.’ This trading online membership service is expected to be launched as a competitor for Amazon Prime.
If we talk about Walmart’s performance overseas, Walmart India has failed to produce any such tremendous results. This had recently led Walmart India to make its investment in the Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. It was this acquisition that helped Walmart put a strong foot down in the Indian trading online space and enabled themselves to make sales. However, this growth is still slow since the recent valuation of Flipkart only stands at a 19 percent hike. The Walmart CEO still believes that they cannot look at the short-term results overseas since their journey in India has just begun. With the joint venture of Walmart and Flipkart, Flipkart has been able to exceed its sales numbers from the pre-COVID levels.
The ease of online grocery shopping wasn’t the only contributing factor
Walmart believes that its online sales did not jump by 97 percent just because they offered curbside pickups and home deliveries. As the coronavirus progressed, food outlets, restaurants, cafes, and more were shut down indefinitely, which caused thousands of people to begin cooking at home. This meant people now needed more units of cooking oil, raw groceries, snacks, beverages, and more. Staying at home more and the need to maintain top-notch hygiene (washing hands regularly with soap and handwash, using hand sanitizers, and cleaning surfaces and objects with disinfectants) on account of the virus also led to a tremendous demand in household cleaning supplies.
Being able to fulfill such a tremendous demand for such items in a short period via trading online allowed Walmart to become a favorite in online shopping. Now, people are making fewer trips to supermarkets and buying from online stores, that too in bulk. This was what enabled Walmart to generate a revenue of US$ 137.74 billion in the Q2 quarter. This is US$ 2.26 billion more from the estimates that were made by analysts at the beginning of the quarter. This revenue is expected to grow further with the launch of Walmart+. However, it is still under development, and Walmart will release more information on it only when it’s ready to be launched.
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