Walmart has begun to add pickup towers to more of its stores to make picking up items ordered online faster and easier for customers.
Eighty more stores will get the automated online order pickup kiosks over the next few months, Business Insider reported. Twenty locations currently have the pickup towers, which measure at least 16 feet tall and 8 feet wide, already installed.
Customers access their items using a barcode on a digital receipt, and within 45 seconds, the item is dispensed on a conveyor belt through a door in the machine, BI reported. The service is faster and easier than reporting to a pickup area and waiting for a store employee to find your items in a storage area.
A similar concept will be used in some stores for pickup of groceries ordered online, limited to $30 or more orders, Chain Store Age reported.
Walmart also has taken steps to encourage customers to pick up their items in-store, offering a “pickup discount” on certain items if they are picked up at a Walmart location rather than shipped to the customer’s home. The amount of the discount depends on the item, and can be as much as $50 on a flat screen TV, BI reported.
Retail Dive reported Walmart is trying to improve its operations, but not necessarily compete with Amazon, because they have very different target customers. “Go to any Walmart and look at anyone shopping at Walmart and you’ll find very few [Amazon] Prime customers,” retail consultant Nick Egelanian said, Retail Dive reported.
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