Walmart's Investment in Tech Could Reverse Dwindling Online Sales
Nowadays, people shop online for anything that is made available by retailers and in the years to come, online sales will probably form the major chunk of the total sales that most retailers manage to complete. In that regard, it must be said that any company which fails to grow its online sales will certainly be a bit alarmed about the future of their business, even if the company happens to be a giant like Walmart and in their latest shareholders meeting that was held on Friday, the executives of the company stated that they hope to turn around the online sales figures.
Walmart is an industry leader but over the past 5 quarters the company's online sales figures have been on the decline and during the meeting, CEO Doug McMillon stated how the company is going to invest in technology in order to boost online sales figures. McMillon sais, "We get to reimagine retail again, and that's what we are going to do," while at the same time he added that the investment will take some time to show tangible results in the balance sheet. Some of the new measures include the use of drones and a strategic partnership with cab aggregating company Uber for home deliveries.
The online publication VentureBeat wrote about the exact situation facing Walmart in terms of facts and figures, "Walmart onlines sales growth has sharply decelerated for five quarters even though its overall performance has been better than most competitors.In the first quarter, online sales growth was 7 percent, down from 8 percent, 10 percent, 16 percent and 17 percent in the previous periods. In 2015, Walmart's online sales rose 12.3 percent to $13.7 billion, which was less than the jump of more than the 16 percent for market leader Amazon.com Inc, to $92.4 billion."
Although the company did not state the exact amount that it wants to invest in technology, it can be safely assumed that it will be a substantial sum consdiering the sheer size of the customer base that Walmart enjoys. Interesting times are in the horizon for not only the company but the customers as well.
