Comment Technology vs. Buying (Score 4, Interesting) 75
At it's heart, Amazon is a technology company. It's filled with technologists, and the success it has had in retail is, in some ways, a side effect.
At it's heart, Walmart is a bulk purchasing company and a real estate company. It is filled with buyers and real estate experts.
Microsoft doesn't care about Walmart succeeding in retail, it cares about selling more cloud processing to Walmart, by making things more complicated and AI-driven, requiring more computing power. It's like teaming up with IBM.
I shop at Walmart all the time in their brick and mortar stores, but Walmart will never be able to compete with Amazon online, because the experience will be clunky, due to the factors above. Amazon has a very seamless online buying experience, and excellent customer service, and that's what people care about when purchasing things online.