America | Main Street


analyst for eMarketer, which tracks e-commerce. “But Walmart is one of the only retailers that’s had the capital and strategy to marshal a true defense.” Over the past decade, Walmart executives realized they needed to use their grocery business to fend off Ama- zon’s expansion. Walmart gets more than 50% of


Amazon Facing Challenge From Unlikely Competitor


With thousands of stores and an army of drivers, a traditional retailer poses big threat to online giant.


A BY SARAH NASSAUER


decade ago, walmart’s thousands of stores across the country made it look like a dinosaur in the


online-shopping era. Now the retail giant is mounting


one of the few serious challenges to Amazon.com’s dominance in e-com- merce, and those very stores are cen- tral to its strategy. Walmart delivered 5 billion items


on the same day they were ordered last year, double the number delivered in 2023. It can now deliver most of the


120,000 products in its sprawling supercenters, including meat, eggs, and milk, to 93% of U.S. households the same day — sometimes within hours. Amazon doesn’t release fi gures that allow an exact comparison of its same-


34 NEWSMAX | MAY 2025


day delivery reach. But Walmart’s sprawling delivery network, which in some areas is faster than Amazon’s, represents a leap that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. “I am very, very grateful that we


have 4,700 — roughly — stores,” which now double as fast-delivery hubs, John Furner, CEO of Walmart U.S., said in an interview. Walmart has carved out a niche


that has Amazon working to catch up — fast delivery of online orders that often include inexpensive groceries, and increasingly other items it sells in its stores, such as clothing, decor, batteries, and prescription medicines. An Amazon spokeswoman


declined to disclose the share of U.S. households that can now receive its same-day shipments. Shoppers in more than 3,500 cit-


ies and towns have access to grocery delivery in some form through Ama- zon, she said, and the company can deliver millions of items the same day. “I don’t think that Walmart will ever


really get to the sheer size Amazon has online,” said Blake Droesch, retail


its U.S. revenue from selling meat, eggs, lettuce, and other groceries. It has used its scale to drive down prices for those items, which draw shoppers for regular trips. That setup works when shoppers


also pick up higher-margin items: clothing, home décor, or small appli- ances. Walmart executives hoped a version of the same system could work online — use groceries to lure online business away from competitors, then make money on bigger, more profi t- able purchases. Executives knew shoppers loved


fast grocery delivery, even if pickups off ered better profi t margins. Walmart developed a system


called Spark, which uses an app to coordinate online orders from its fl eet of superstores. Walmart pays Spark drivers about


$10, plus tip, to pick up orders from Walmart workers at stores, and some- times collect items from shelves. If an order includes many items or is a lon- ger drive, the payment goes up. Samantha Atkinson became a


Spark driver last year to supplement her income running a small online cos- metics company. Five days a week, she spends about four hours in the morning crisscrossing southeast Idaho delivering groceries from Walmart in her black Nissan Murano. The 43-year-old mother of three


young adult daughters likes to start as the sun comes up to have her pick of the most lucrative orders that may have been loaded into the Spark app overnight, she said. Typically, she earns around $100


a day before paying for gas and other expenses, collecting three or four orders at a time from the store parking lot.


WALMART/STEVE HEAP/GETTY IMAGES / AMAZON/TWIN DESIGN/SHUTTERSTOCK


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