Walmart intros pickup concept

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Walmart began testing Walmart Pickup – Grocery, a new same-day pickup concept, on Sept. 29. The retailer continues to explore new ways to make shopping faster and more convenient by integrating its digital and physical assets. Located in Bentonville, Ark., Walmart Pickup – Grocery enables customers to place grocery orders online and schedule a pickup time at no additional charge.

“We look at this as an opportunity to allow customers to shop how they want to, when they want to,” said Jeff Davis, Wal-Mart U.S. EVP and CFO, who discussed the concept during an analyst presentation in June. “Within this depot, it will have access to about 10,000 items. … These are high-volume items. It’s not only in grocery and fresh and dry, but also it includes anything in our over-the-counter market.”

If the concept takes off, the convenience play may be of particular appeal to millennial shoppers, who don’t take the time to plan their meals ahead as often as their baby boomer elders do. According to the Food Marketing Institute’s U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2014, while millennials make lists before they shop, 37% of them do so right before the shopping trip. And for younger generations in particular, planning for a shopping trip is much more likely to be about building a meal or other eating occasion rather than stocking up the pantry. More than one-quarter of all meals consumed by twenty-somethings include items purchased earlier in the day.