Coverage: Wal-Mart and Google team up to take on Amazon

Google will start offering Walmart products to people who shop on Google Express, the company’s online shopping mall, the first time the world’s biggest retailer has made its products available online in the United States outside of its own website.

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Michael Corkery of The New York Times had the news:

The partnership, announced on Wednesday, is a testament to the mutual threat facing both companies from Amazon.com. Amazon’s dominance in online shopping is challenging brick-and-mortar retailers like Walmart, while more people are starting web searches for products they might buy on Amazon instead of Google.

But working together does not ensure that they will be any more successful. For most consumers, Amazon remains the primary option for online shopping. No other retailer can match the size of Amazon’s inventory, the efficiency with which it moves shoppers from browsing to buying, or its many home delivery options.

The two companies said the partnership was less about how online shopping is done today, but where it is going in the future. They said that they foresaw Walmart customers reordering items they purchased in the past by speaking to Google Home, the company’s voice-controlled speakerand an answer to Amazon’s Echo. The eventual plan is for Walmart customers to also shop using the Google Assistant, the artificially intelligent software assistant found in smartphones running Google’s Android software.

Scott Neuman of NPR reported that Walmart customers will be able to link to Google:

Existing Walmart customers will also be able to link their Walmart account to Google to receive personalized shopping results based on online and in-store purchases. “For example, if you order Tide PODS or Gatorade, your Google Assistant will let you know which size and type you previously ordered from Walmart, making it easy for you to buy the right product again,” Sridhar Ramaswamy, Google’s senior vice president for ads and commerce, said in a blog post.

Walmart and Amazon have gone head-to-head for customers in a battle that has pitted the biggest bricks-and-mortar retailer against the largest online one. In the tit-for-tat competition for customers, Walmart is moving to establish a stronger e-commerce presence and Amazon is aiming to capture a bigger chunk of Walmart’s lower-income customer base.

Amazon’s share of online sales dwarfs every other retailer, including Walmart. And the competition is only ramping up. On Wednesday, Whole Foods shareholders approved Amazon’s acquisition of the natural foods giant.

James F. Peltz of the Los Angeles Times reported that Google Express is playing catchup to Amazon Echo:

The partnership adds to Google’s effort to catch up in the market for voice-based assistant devices, and by extension protect its dominant Internet search engine, which many consumers use for online shopping.

Google Express already has such retailers as Target Corp. and Costco Wholesale Corp. in its stable, and earns commissions from those merchants on orders it handles. But Google hopes Wal-Mart will make its voice-shopping unit even more attractive to consumers because Wal-Mart would offer the largest number of items in the group.

Amazon’s Echo had 74% of the U.S. home voice speaker market as of June 30 while Google Home had only 26%, according to research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

And among the Echo users, half had made some type of online purchase on the device with Alexa, the firm said.

“The future of retail is going to be voice shopping, or what’s called conversational commerce,” said Joe Feldman, senior managing director at Telsey Advisory Group.