Walmart's Continuous Competition Against Amazon and Netflix

Prime Day has ended and has generated the highest single-day sales in Amazon's history as it sold over 100 million products. However, the event was also beneficial to many of the company's competitors, boosting their sales due to the many discounts they concurrently offered to seize the action. One of these competitors was Walmart, which held many deals in an effort to steal some profits from Amazon. Walmart has notoriously been Amazon's largest online competitor, but by a huge margin. Though initiating its online business roughly at the same time as Amazon, the company has never been able to make more revenue or surpass Amazon's growth primarily due to its inferior business model compared to Amazon Prime. The membership fees that Amazon attains is massive and is mostly responsible for the company's revenue. However, the company also gains a considerable amount of money from Amazon Web Services, which offers cloud-computing platforms to individuals and businesses alike, such as servers, storage, and networks. These two factors of Amazon's growth have jeopardized the success of Walmart for years. However, Walmart has lately been taking some action to resolve this.

For example, just recently, Walmart has taken initiatives against Amazon Web Services by partnering with Microsoft and using its cloud and artificial intelligence technology. This partnership will allow Walmart to utilize Microsoft's cloud platform Azure, which will operate and maintain Walmart's website and internal functions. Additionally, Microsoft's artificial intelligence and deep learning tools will be used to analyze shopping data and improve the customer shopping experience. Effectively, this deal increases the competition with Microsoft's and Walmart's biggest competitor Amazon, a movement that could slow the growth of Amazon Web Services as other competitors may pursue the same approach.

Additionally, Walmart plans to enter the video streaming sector with ambitions to compete against Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Per rumors, its service, branded under Vudu, will offer a collection of licensed content, along with some original content. Reportedly, it will cost around $8 per month and be available to the public towards the end of the year. As of now, Vudu allows members to rent or buy from a wide selection of TV shows and movies on demand. It also possesses the capabilities to digitize DVDs and Blu-rays. While Walmart acquired Vudu in 2010, it didn't alter its business model or outlined the company's motivations behind streaming, but it seems as though the company plans to address that in the coming future.

Apparently, Walmart it taking some new initiatives to expand its markets after repeatedly being weakened by its competitors. It has incentives to improve the customer experience while offering new services. However, Walmart has attempted for many years to be an effective competitor. Its brand has consequently been weakened by its failing attempts and rather static growth, which could hurt its future projects as well. Already, Vudu will encounter immense competition from Netflix and Prime Video, making its probabilities of success rather small, and the effect that Microsoft's cloud and AI tools will have on Walmart's business model are currently unpredictable. To surpass and adequately compete with Amazon, Walmart will have to do more.