As more and more consumers turn to the web for their shopping needs, it's essential for ecommerce businesses to differentiate from industry competition.
Wal-Mart via its online business is set to compete with Amazon in time for Cyber Monday, an event created by marketing to incite shoppers to make purchases online to be held right after the Thanksgiving. Wal-Mart late Thursday introduced its strategy for Cyber Monday, which was setting its minimum order amount for customers to avail free shipping to Amazon's minimum USD35. Wal-Mart's original minimum shopping order was USD50. Amazon, on the other hand, had raised its minimum shopping order from USD25 in October this year.Moreover, Wal-Mart also introduced its price matching feature on its website as well.
In a conference call, Walmart.com Chief Executive Officer Joel Anderson said that the minimum shopping order was not a pricing competition, but was a business decision to satisfy its customers.
Wal-Mart and Amazon had been competitive ever since Amazon began its showroom promotions. Showrooming is the practice of comparing prices in physical retail stores and online stores in order to find the best price. Amazon reportedly encouraged its customers to check out the products they intend to buy in physical stores and have them purchase the items on the company's e-commerce website. As a result, Walmart and Target stopped selling Amazon Kindles in their stores.
According to Anderson, Cyber Monday last year recorded the highest gross online day sales in the history of Wal-Mart. Customers spent a combined USD1.46 billion in online purchases. The record was also recognized as the most amount of money spent on the Internet in one day ever. It was also noted that the sales was a 17% spike from sales of the same period last year. Customers spent USD1.25 billion online in last year's Cyber Monday.
On the other hand, the retail industry saw Walmart, Kohl's, Target and every major store cheating out of traditional shopping holiday schedules, like launching Black Friday on a Thursday, prompting employees to work during Thanksgiving.
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