How Walmart Should Better Market Walmart+ To Compete With Amazon Prime
A few months ago, Walmart released its highly anticipated competitor to Amazon Prime, Walmart+. While the service is slowly becoming a success for the company, studies show that only 11% of US shoppers have signed up for Walmart+. Meaning millions of Walmart customers still have not subscribed to Walmart+.
Understandably so, many consumers question why they would pay for Walmart+ when they could receive the same benefits plus more from Amazon Prime.
Compared to Amazon Prime, Walmart+’s valuation proposition is nowhere near Prime’s when compared side-to-side. Amazon Prime includes many more benefits than Walmart+ and recently released a new pharmacy option for its members. Below I outline a few different feasible benefits that Walmart could add to their new Walmart+ platform for new customer acquisition.
Pharmacy
While Walmart already offers a pharmacy delivery option, there are a few different ways they could increase benefits to consumers with Walmart+. Amazon recently released information on its Prime pharmacy options and allows Prime members to get FREE 2-Day Delivery and save when paying without insurance. Walmart could easily add this shipping option to its Walmart+ service, instead of currently charging $8.
Content
When paying for Amazon Prime, members get a bundle of services, and a big one for many customers is content. Amazon Prime offers almost all digital content types (TV, books, movies, music) to its subscribers.
What does Walmart+ offer its subscribers? Nothing.
One way Walmart could curb the problem of not currently owning any content libraries as big as Amazon would be to take Verizon and Spotify’s route in recent years. Walmart should bundle their already excellent service with other high-quality services. Bundling a service like Disney+ with a Walmart+ subscription for a subscriber wholesale price on Walmart’s side would make for a better consumer experience. Plus, bundling would also allow partnerships between Walmart and other media giants to grow as Walmart needs to learn from them as it builds up its content library in the background.
TikTok
Also, recently, Walmart has pursued a small stake in TikTok and with a new partnership, is helping to bring livestream shopping to TikTok. This partnership will allow both Walmart and TikTok to boost their e-commerce operations. To incorporate Walmart+ into this partnership, Walmart could enable users with Walmart+ subscriptions access to early product rollout livestreams or special discounts on products shown through TikTok. Adding either of these benefits through Walmart+ and the TikTok partnership would promote community and subscriber growth, particularly among the younger community users of TikTok.
Walmart Rewards Credit Card
The Walmart Capital One Rewards Card is already comparatively better than Amazon’s Rewards Card. Walmart’s reward card offers 5% cashback at Walmart.com, including pickup & delivery (Walmart+), as compared to Amazon’s only 3% cashback at Amazon and
Whole Foods Market. Walmart needs to better advertise its rewards card more to consumers looking at their Walmart+ offering as an added benefit to those looking to save more.
Other Ideas
Walmart could produce various benefits that it should add to its service. Other ideas include promotional credits, cloud services, and discounts on new video games. These benefits individually would be very appealing to several different audiences which in turn brings in new subscribers.
Ultimately, Walmart has laid the foundation for a great monthly service if it continues to add value to its customers through other benefits. These are just a few ideas I scraped from Amazon’s Prime benefit offerings, so I am eager to see what Walmart chooses to add and not to add.
