Dive Brief:
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Walmart.com is offering lower prices on many items, compared to prices on the same items in physical Walmart stores, and is increasingly using data for dynamic pricing.
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Wal-Mart’s brick-and-mortar physical stores often won’t match its own online prices, although customers can order an item online — even when standing inside a Walmart store — and opt for in-store pickup.
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While the retailer appears to be keeping its pricing policies separate, it is integrating its fulfillment, with 20% of Walmart.com orders now picked up at area stores.
Dive Insight:
It’s been difficult to get a Wal-Mart store to match online prices for a while now, including its own online prices.
But things are getting a little weird now that ship-from-store is increasingly a focus of Wal-Mart’s e-commerce/omnichannel strategy. It means that customers who want to obtain the cheaper-online item must access Walmart.com and opt to “pick-up in store” when they’re already there. That's not exactly a smooth customer service design.
