Wal-Mart to offer discounts to compete with Amazon

Wal-Mart is launching a new effort to make inroads on Amazon’s market share by offering in-store pickup discounts on more than a million online-only products it sells.

The Bentonville, Ark., company will be in direct competition with Amazon’s pickup point option, which lets users shopping online have their orders delivered to a pickup location near them.

Starting on April 19, the Wal-Mart discounts will be available on 10,000 products and the savings will expand by the end of June. Wal-Mart President and CEO of eCommerce Marc Lore wrote in a post announcing the move that in-store pickups at Wal-Mart will dramatically reduce the bulk of costs associated with shipping.

{mosads}The big box retailer decided to buy Jet.com last August, as a part of its larger effort to remain competitive with Amazon. Battles between the two companies have spurred a price war to offer consumers the lowest prices possible.

Amazon accounted for more than half of all domestic growth in online retail last year and was responsible for 43 percent of all U.S. online retail in the same timespan.

In January of this year, Wal-Mart introduced free two-day shipping to compete with Amazon’s free two-day shipping service offered with its Prime subscriptions. Wal-Mart’s version of the shipping service is available without a paid membership.

In a release, Lore said Wal-Mart is “moving at the speed of a startup.”