Walmart Is Raising Prices Online To Increase In-Store Traffic (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Walmart is taking a bit of an nontraditional approach to boost sales ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping events by raising prices for products sold online and discounting those same items in physical retail stores. According to The Wall Street Journal, the big-box store has quietly raised prices for household and food items such as toothbrushes, macaroni and cheese, and dog food on its website while the prices in stores remained the same. If there are price discrepancies between online and in-store purchases, Walmart will now highlight this on the product's web listing to encourage customers to buy them from their local stores. It's all part of an effort to increase foot traffic as Walmart continues to compete with Amazon just about everywhere else.

With the new pricing strategy, a twin-pack of Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper costs $3.30 on Walmart.com, but goes as low as $2.50 if purchased at a store in Illinois. The aim is to also help reduce processing costs and increase online sales margins, since driving customers to stores means less shipping costs for the retailer. Shipping one box of instant macaroni and cheese from Chicago to Atlanta could cost Walmart as much as $10, reports the WSJ.

Comments

Clueless

[fishthegeek]

Letâ(TM)s say Jimmy is shopping on Walmartâ(TM)s website. Heâ(TM)s shopping there because he doesnâ(TM)t want to go to a brink-n-mortar. He sees the price difference and thinks to himself âoeDang! Itâ(TM)s almost $1.00 cheaper in the store. I wonder what Amazonâ(TM)s price would be? Wow. Amazon is .50 cents cheaper online, and plus I wonâ(TM)t have to go to the store. Iâ(TM)ll just order from Amazon.â Walmart is absolutely clueless.

Re:Clueless

[rmdingler]

Drive through fast food and even liquor stores. Convenience stores where you can get a common grocery item quicker, but at an increased markup.

Sometimes it is the selection, occasionally it is the price, but ordering from the comfort of one's home is generally the ultimate in expedient convenience. Ordering household goods in your jammy pants with an adult beverage is almost worth missing the freak show at the block and mortar retailer.

Why do they feel confident of that end result?

[RyoShin]

Walmart will now highlight this on the product's web listing to encourage customers to buy them from their local stores. It's all part of an effort to increase foot traffic as Walmart continues to compete with Amazon just about everywhere else.

And the thing that stops a person from just going to another website with a likely-lower price is...?

I even RTFA (okay, skimmed) to see if there was an answer to this question. I honestly don't know why someone would feel compelled to actually drive to a store (Wal-mart or otherwise) to purchase an item that they already intended to purchase online, especially since it's likely there are other retailers who will have lower prices after Wal-mart increases theirs. (The referenced WSJ article is paywalled so I can't look there for answers, either.)

And from TFA:

Shipping one box of instant macaroni and cheese from Chicago to Atlanta could cost Walmart as much as $10, reports the WSJ.

...so charge $10 to ship it? I realize things like Amazon Prime have made a lot of people expect cheap or free shipping, but that's an aberration, not a requirement, of online shopping.

I've never bought from them online

[reboot246]

Walmart's website is one big clusterfuck of design. They need to learn from other sites how to do it. Lowe's online site is a great example. Not only can I tell if an item is available at my local store, they actually give me a map of the local store and tell me exactly where to find what I'm looking for. And every time I go to the site it knows which local store I live near.

I think the reason Walmart can't do that is because they're constantly moving stuff around in their stores. In fact, if it's been a few weeks since my last visit, I have trouble finding what I knew was there before.

Shopping at walmart.com is a headache. Searching for an item is just about impossible. Once you find it you still don't know if it's available locally or online because the site forgets where you're shopping!

Re:How about using real shipping costs?

[MachineShedFred]

I'm wondering why the Wall Street Journal thinks that walmart would need to ship individual boxes of mac and cheese over 700 miles through the heart of the midwest, and why that particular statistic is of any relevance to anything at all.

What, has there been a run on mac and cheese in Chicago, and the 500+ stores and god knows how many distribution centers are all tapped out? Or does Atlanta boxed mac and cheese taste better than Chicago boxed mac and cheese? And god damn it, I need my shitty boxed mac and cheese RIGHT FUCKING NOW, so you'd better same-day that shit.