“It is clear that Wal-Mart intends to continue to turn up the heat online”, Moody’s analyst Charlie O’Shea said in a note.
Advertisement
Beginning next month, customers who place orders online will be able to use Walmart’s mobile app to process returns, the company claims, in 35 seconds or less.
The new service is useful for Walmart in another way: it will serve as a new route to getting people into the physical stores to shop more overall – not just to exchange items, but to pick up products you might need (or buy those you may actually not need, as is often the case for me).
Wal-Mart Stores Inc.is introducing a simplified return process in early November for items sold and shipped by Walmart.com, to be followed by a simplified process for store purchases early next year.
Walmart rival Amazon.com already has a test program, involving the availability of select Kohl’s stores in Chicago and Los Angeles, as dropoff points for returned products purchased through the Amazon website. Wal-Mart Stores had a return on equity of 17.71% and a net margin of 2.98%. Then at the store, customers will use a mobile express lane at the service desk, scan a QR code at the desk and hand the item to return to a Wal-Mart employee.
At its annual investor day in Bentonville, Arkansas, Lore said Tuesday that Walmart.com will soon feature Jet.com’s “smart-cart” system.
“We have technology to help those things”, said Daniel Eckert, the head of services and digital acceleration for Walmart US. The launch won’t be for every item but that could change in the future. Walmart also said it’s now planning a similar returns process for items purchased from third-party sellers on Walmart.com.
The move is another in the battle between brick and mortar retailers and online stores to make life easier for customers.
The new experience will “make returning an item fast, easy – and maybe even a little enjoyable”, as stated in a press release released by Walmart announcing the new process.
The larger grocery retailer in the USA has also said that it is expecting to add another 1,000 locations for shipping grocery orders made online during its 2019 fiscal year.
That includes goods that Walmart would discard anyway, like opened makeup, bruised perishable goods, or perhaps a bottle of floor cleaner damaged during delivery.
Advertisement
The upcoming return policy is going to allow clients to start a returning protocol right from retailer’s application. By doing so, we believe that WMT will leverage its low-price offer, its terrestrial locations close to customers, and its best-in-class supply chain to provide an integrated customer offer and shopping experience that will be hard to replicate.
