Walmart Steps Up With Free Next-Day Delivery

Walmart Inc. today will make good on a tweet it floated President Trump-style last month after competitor Amazon revealed it would launch free next-day delivery for members of its Prime service. “One-day free shipping…without a membership fee. Now, THAT would be groundbreaking. Stay tuned,” the world’s largest retailer tweeted, in a thinly veiled reference to Amazon’s $119 annual Prime fee. Bentonville, Ark.-based Walmart is beginning to roll out NextDay free delivery, without a membership fee, for orders over $35 on walmart.com. The offer is initially available to Walmart consumers in Phoenix and Las Vegas. Following that, it will expand to Southern California in the coming months, then gradually roll out to about 75 percent of the U.S. population, including 40 to 50 major metropolitan areas, by year’s end, the retailer said. With shoppers demanding increasingly fast, flexible, low-cost or no-cost options, delivery has become a key battleground in the fight for customers. When Amazon said it would launch next-day delivery, retail pundits called the move “a game changer.” But Walmart was able to quickly ramp up its capabilities, partly due to the fact that it’s pressed its store fleet into service to fulfill online orders. Amazon generally lacks a large-scale brick-and-mortar infrastructure — Walmart

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