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Back around 10 years ago on the Berkshire board, when WMT was one of Brk’s holdings, there were some interesting discussions about AMZN getting into the grocery business with Whole Foods while WMT was getting into the e-commerce business with its purchase of Jet.com.

My personal memory was that the consensus was WMT was doomed to fail whereas AMZN would revolutionize grocery delivery.

Industry wide, I don’t know how each company is faring, but on a personal level I can say that Walmart won me over, largely thanks to the pandemic. I started regularly using the Walmart+ membership grocery delivery service during the lockdown and haven’t looked back.
Jet.com didn’t survive, but the Walmart.com site works fine for shopping. Nearly any non grocery item I previously might bought from Amazon is now available in the Walmart marketplace options.
Walmart’s loyalty card rewards through Capital One are equivalent to Amazon’s rewards card through Chase. (5% discount.)
The shipping from Walmart is not as good, but close enough.

The local Walmart has drone delivery, but I haven’t tried it.

If not for online grocery shopping, I likely would not shop in store in Walmart again. The self checkout process was so bad that I’d rather drive an extra mile and pay higher prices at Target.

Mostly now I use Amazon for Prime video shows. Otherwise I their reviews of products which I then go on to purchase through Walmart.com.

Anyone else have opinions on Walmart vs Amazon, or shopping in general?

Anyone else have opinions on Walmart vs Amazon, or shopping in general?

Without spending a lot of time looking, I found this:

Walmart US Retail Sales 2013-2024 - Marketplace Pulse

Sales in Walmart brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce in the US. Last reported quarter 
2024 Q1 it was $108.70 billion,   up by 5% year-over-year   from $103.90 billion. From $420.50 billion 
in 2022 it   increased by 5%   to $441.80 billion in 2023. 

https://www.marketplacepulse.com/stats/walmart-us-....

Amazon:

 
Amazon annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2024. Revenue can be 
defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales 
of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs
 and expenses are subtracted to arrive at net income.
Amazon revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2024 was $143.313B, a 12.53% increase 
year-over-year.
Amazon revenue for the twelve months ending March 31, 2024 was $590.740B,   a  12.54% increase 
year-over-year.  
Amazon annual revenue for 2023 was $574.785B,   a 11.83% increase   from 2022.
Amazon annual revenue for 2022 was $513.983B,   a 9.4% increase   from 2021.
Amazon annual revenue for 2021 was $469.822B, a   21.7% increase from 2020   . 

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AMZN/ama...

So roughly speaking, it appears that Amazon is posting almost (sometimes more than) twice as much as WalMart. If these trends keep up, Amazon will be bigger than Walmart in 2026 in terms of sales.

Personally, I get an Amazon box multiple times a week and have spend many thousands of dollars with them year after year. My brother and I compared notes; he won with more than 125 deliveries last year. Meanwhile I go to Walmart when I need something like a car battery or maybe a fresh plant. Otherwise, it’s a rare event. I probably go to Target as much or more than WalMart. Obviously YMMV.

My personal memory is that the consensus was WMT was doomed to fail whereas AMZN would revolutionize grocery delivery.

I don’t remember that, and if I had I would have doubted it because Whole Foods is not a “mass market” grocer, and trades in a completely different environment than Kroger, WalMart, etc. Perhaps some people thought it would, but clearly they were wrong.

I don't think Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods has made much of a difference in our shopping...my wife still goes to Whole Foods occasionally, and maybe she purchases more of something when it has a bigger discount for Prime members, but probably not much.

We still buy as much (or more) from Amazon over the last few years. I'm the only one who will go to Walmart for a few things...she shops at Target/Costco/local grocery stores because, like you, she really dislikes shopping there. Maybe it would be different if we did online grocery delivery?

I'd say the main change over the last few years is that Costco gets more and more of our business.

Since I've gotten married my wife does most of the shopping. She uses Safeway to pre-order things and then just drives by to have them put the stuff in the car. She also will go to Sams and Costco depending on what she needs.

I'm usually a Walmart hater and avoided the store for a long time due to it seemingly being dirty, crowded, etc. (crowds are a reason I usually avoid Costco). Where we are living now I will go to the Walmart early in the morning (before 0830) and it isn't crowded, I can usually use the self checkout line and no one is there. I only buy a couple of items there.

I have Walmart+ via a credit card and I did try delivery back east but it was hit or miss. I didn't like the substitution of items and it seemed awkward to turn off, frequently deliveries were way late (i.e., 12-4pm and still getting late messages after 4pm so I would have to cancel) so we haven't done that in a long time.


I kept Amazon Prime for one more year, partly due to forgetting to cancel it. I used to use it a lot more before ads were added. And I would buy BritBox and Acorn through it but now I get them separately. The Amazon Prime TV has diminishing value to me. I suppose some people "need" it for NFL games now but I can survive w/o that.

Amazon is also losing me with all of the 3rd party items it sells and how it keep pushing items at the top of the page due to sponsorships, etc.

I'll have to do a search but can anyone give a quick note on BRK buying/selling of Walmart stock? I didn't realized he ever owned it.

Amazon is also losing me with all of the 3rd party items it sells and how it keep pushing items at the top of the page due to sponsorships, etc.

Sadly, it seems every merchant is eventually led to this kind of abuse. A search on Google is now littered with ads, line after line after line. Sometimes it’s hard to find what you’re looking for through all the ads.

Amazon pushes sponsored crap to the top of the searches there.

WalMart puts sponsored items at eye level, although you don’t understand that as easily as the online “pushes”, but it’s common in the supermarket industry; stores are paid to give “prime space” (eye level shelfs and end caps) for payment to move product. For slightly less payment they will move a favorite product away - or out - in favor of someone who will pay for the shelf space (it’s called “slotting allowances”) and manufacturers pay the bribe to get into the stores.

My brother, who was in the grocery store set-up business, spent his entire life juggling manufacturer demands and bribes with the realities of trying to have the products people actually want on the shelves. There’s a funny side-phenomenon to this push to introduce new products, called “the sophomore slump”. It’s when the incentives go away, the sales people aren’t getting pep talked, and some other manufacturer pays to have *their* new product on the shelves - which is why 90% of new products fail within two years.

Got carried away there, sorry. Anyway, yeah. Everybody crapifies eventually.

And don’t get me started on Facebook.

Goofy: won’t use “you shop for me” services because I like to choose my own bananas, etc.

“ I'll have to do a search but can anyone give a quick note on BRK buying/selling of Walmart stock? I didn't realized he ever owned it.”

I had to search myself, but it looks like brk had owned WMT for a long time before suddenly liquidating. No reason given.

What I personally remember was that WMT stock price had languished in the same range for years. Around the time of the sale, WMT bought jet.com and started building their neighborhood market stores, presumably to compete with Amazon for internet and Dollar General for smaller markets.

I think the neighborhood market idea has mostly been a bust.

Maybe Warren decided that WMT was di-worse-ifying.

Amazon pushes sponsored crap to the top of the searches there.

Amazon was the first site I was aware of that allowed consumer reviews. I remember thinking, this is crazy. Anybody could write a bad review about one of their books! But it was actually really smart because people grew to trust the brand.

CEO Andy Jassy has made revenue growth through ads a top priority. So if one sponsored ad per page is good, 35 are better. I used to start product searches at Amazon, but at some point I just went back to Google because of the eshitification of Amazon's site.

Amazon did bring down prices at Whole Foods though. I definitely shop there more because the prices are more reasonable than they used to be.

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