Walmart Is Quietly Becoming Quite The Mobile Hipster
Written by Evan SchumanWith a staggering $444 billion in annual revenue, Walmart has generally been sluggish and conservative, allowing tech innovations to be toyed with by rivals such as Amazon.com. But in the last few months, Walmart has quietly started acting like quite the aggressive startup. It has embraced mobile and various innovative tech approaches, including an infatuation with social media, in a way that no major chain—especially not the old Walmart—has ever done.
Consider just the last couple weeks’ activity at Walmart alone, and it becomes clear how change is being embraced by Bentonville. And as anyone who has ever worked with an aircraft carrier knows, turning such a huge boat around quickly is hardly easy. How that’s happening at Walmart is the topic of StorefrontBacktalk‘s September monthly column in Retail Week, the U.K.’s largest retail publication. The column lives here at Retail Week. For those who don’t have a Retail Week subscription—shame on you!—here’s a copy at StorefrontBacktalk.
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Starbucks isn't going to replace their existing enterprise POS system with apps that have 1 percent of the functionality, control and reporting that they need to run their business. Likewise, I'm not going to replace my BMW with a free skateboard, just because both technically enable me to get from A to B.
-Gavin Phillips
