Re: First Walmart, now Amazon? Looking at Buying Groceries Online in Canada

This will be my first blog post on someone else’s blog and I decided to comment on my very good friend Brandon’s.

Reading the article, it seems like another good decision of Amazon’s to expand. Online grocery shopping is becoming more and more common while Amazon is finding it hard to increase sales by a significant amount so the decision seems almost natural. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Amazon’s dominant position in their industry can be explained by looking at how Amazon reinvests most of their gross profit into new projects such as SMILE. I also agree with the point that Brandon gives about Amazon having the upper hand in distribution scales and logistics.

However, I feel that Walmart has an upper hand in some aspects of this head-to-head battle for the king of e-commerce. With Walmart’s revenue topping $469 billion and Amazon’s revenue being only $61 billion, Walmart has more flexibility to invest in the battle against the world’s biggest online store. I feel that the area where Walmart needs to compete in against Amazon online is the sales of perishable goods. Although Walmart does not have as big a distribution capacity as Amazon, with the growth of online grocery shopping being +22%, they have a chance of beating Amazon in this battle.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/brandonkothe/2013/10/31/first-walmart-now-amazon-looking-at-buying-groceries-online-in-canada/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/amazon-launches-online-grocery-store-in-canada-1.2303320

http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/amazon-vs-walmart.png

http://media.ycharts.com/charts/a639634d5758f5b2cf9050336b2c2a4c.png

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