No. 11: With Battle Scars Fading, Walmart and Target Learn How to Fight Amazon

There’s little doubt that Amazon contributed to the deaths of scores of mom-and-pop shops, which were unable to compete with the digital behemoth’s low prices and convenience, and it helped push toward demise specialty retailers and department stores that were too slow to adapt to the New Order. But reports of the end of mass merchants Walmart Inc. and Target Corp. at the hands of Amazon have been greatly exaggerated — and this year showed the two discounters firmly fighting back. Walmart and Target are leveraging unique strengths and assets that the digital behemoth doesn’t have or would be hard-pressed to create or acquire, rolling out services like buy online and pickup in store and fulfilling online orders from their stores. And while Amazon’s market cap continues to dwarf that of Walmart and Target, Wall Street has recognized that the two retailers are starting to get things right. Walmart’s market cap rose $70 billion this past year to over $340 billion, while Target’s climbed $31 billion to $65 billion. Amazon’s, of course, topped $1 trillion briefly this year before the current level of more than $885 billion. “Both retailers are playing to their competitive strengths,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners. “Both

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