The American multinational retail corporation, Walmart is known for operating a chain of hypermarkets, grocery stores, discount departmental stores in the United States and other parts of the world. The company is one of the biggest rivals of Amazon and not very long ago, both of these companies along with multiple others around the globe were severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, directly affecting their businesses in terms of income and profits. It was a bad situation for the market but slowly as things go back to normal, their businesses have started to escalate yet again.
Having said that, Walmart is bringing the competition stakes high enough to compete head-to-head with Amazon by leveraging the opportunity and new demands in the market after the global pandemic.
According to recent reports, Walmart has announced a delivery service for local retailers that is said to use self-driving cars and drones to deliver goods and products within, say about, two hours of ordering in. The retail company is calling this service “GoLocal” and it is intended to be up and running by the end of this year.
As mentioned in a report by Engadget, it is a White-label service which means that deliveries will not be made by Walmart-branded vehicles only. Under Walmart’s GoLocal infrastructure, local retailers can continue to use their existing commerce platform and still partner up with GoLocal service. Walmart is raising the stakes in the market and it is possible that after the dust of this new operation settles, Walmart could expand the GoLocal service to other geographies.
CNBC notes that Spark Driving School and other delivery companies will partner up with Walmart as a part of the GoLocal delivery service.
GoLocal is the perfect opportunity for Walmart to generate new revenue streams and benefit small business owners as well as consumers with its local delivery service in times of the life-threatening COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, it is a win-win situation for all, except for Amazon as Walmart is slowly rising up to that level, competing with Amazon.
Speaking of Amazon, it is moving its delivery network in-house which is different from Walmart’s White-label service. Engadget mentions in its report, Walmart will deliver small-scale and big-scale products within two hours of ordering-in in some local markets as compared to Amazon that often promises same-day or next-day delivery.
Walmart plans to use drones and self-driving cars in carrying out its operations, this means the future of local retail deliveries is here.
