Walmart employee app gives physical stores more power

Youtube/Walmart

• Walmart
  is now empowering its store employees to help shoppers buy in
  store from Walmart.com.
• It’s releasing an app for the devices employees in
  Walmart stores which will allow them to take to place orders on
  Walmart.com for customers.
• It’s another example of how Walmart is leveraging its
  stores to take on Amazon
  and eliminate the difference between online and offline
  shopping.

Walmart is giving store employees the full power Walmart.com in
the palm of their hands.

Starting Tuesday, Walmart is deploying an app to store employee’s
in-store touchscreen devices allowing them to help customers buy
items on Walmart.com.

“The Dotcom Store offers customers even more assortment options
than what’s on our physical shelves –
whether that be different sizes, colors or varieties,” said Tom
Ward, head of digital and
central operations for Walmart US, said in a statement. 

If a shopper in a Walmart store can’t find exactly what they’re
looking for, the employee can help the shopper place an order for
any item shipped and sold by Walmart online. They can choose to
have it sent to their home or the store for free pickup.

A barcode is then produced — sent via an email, text, or a
printed ticket — which is then given to the store’s cashier at
the end of the shopping trip to be scanned. Once scanned, the
shopper can use any form of payment to cover the item — including
cash — and the order begins to be processed by Walmart’s online
order fulfillment network. The customer pays for any physical
purchases at the same time, in one transaction.

Read more:

Walmart just hit a major milestone in its quest to take on
Amazon

The service will be available in nearly all of Walmart’s 4,700
stores in the US, greatly expanding their ability to sell
customers what they want. The service is currently only available
for items sold and shipped by Walmart, but the company said it
plans to offer items sold by its marketplace partners soon.

With online sales still only measuring less than 10% of total
retail sales in the US, it make sense that Walmart is looking to
flex its muscles in the area and show that physical stores still
matter for many customers.

It’s a clear move to target the shopper that wouldn’t first think
of going online to buy something — either because they primarily
do their shopping in stores and always have, or they lack the
means to shop online.

Most customers, one assumes, would just whip out their phone
instinctively to find something online if they couldn’t find it
in store. But some have still not yet been initiated into the
world of online shopping, and would need employee assistance
getting there.

There’s also still a large part of the US population that is
considered unbanked — that means no checking account, savings
account, or credit cards of any kind. 

That leaves this population —
an estimated 15.6 million people— without
any way to shop online via traditional means. This customer
segment has long been one of Walmart’s forte, and they have their
own products geared toward this customer, like low-fee checking
accounts and money services that are done in the store, like
low-fee check cashing and bill pay.

Dotcom Store crucially allows for the payment of online sales in
cash, which has been something of a holy grail for retailers like
Walmart with a large base of low-income consumers.