Walmart Speeds Deliveries By Fulfilling Orders At Local Stores

In an effort to reduce delivery times, Walmart announced that it will start fulfilling some of its online orders directly from individual stores.

“We’ll use our existing local delivery capabilities to get orders to customers faster, while reducing the load on our online fulfillment centers,” Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer product, said in a statement on Tuesday (Nov. 24).

He added that customers won’t notice a difference when they’re ordering, but “will notice that … their orders are arriving super-fast.”

Some people will be able to get orders on the same day, and deliveries might come “in a Walmart bag from a store” instead of a box delivered from a Walmart.com fulfillment center, Ward said.

Walmart has more than 2,800 stores and offers delivery to almost two-thirds of the country. The new program gives customers fast service by enabling the retail giant to leverage all of its existing resources, while also using less packaging and fewer boxes.

Walmart is getting ready for the second phase of its three-part “Black Friday Deals for Days” sale. Most stores and Neighborhood Market locations will have extended hours and will be open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. local time.

A PYMNTS research project in October indicates that about a month after its launch, 17 percent of U.S. consumers report having a new Walmart membership model.

Comparatively, 68 percent of consumers report belonging to Amazon Prime, which launched in 2005 and has 150 million subscribers worldwide. Of that 17 percent with Walmart+, 15 percent already had an Amazon Prime account and about 2 percent of them did not.

In other news, Walmart is now offering Christmas decorating services and will hang lights in partnership with Handy. The retailer will also deliver a live Christmas tree to people’s homes, along with greenery, poinsettias or Amaryllis.