At a large press event last fall, a top Amazon executive stood onstage in front of hundreds of journalists and took a swipe at the company’s largest retail rival.
Referencing Amazon.com’s massive product selection, and plans for the company to more closely integrate groceries into its main online shopping experience, Amazon VP Anand Varadarajan boasted that the tech giant was building a version of a “supercenter that’s actually super to shop at,”—a not-so-subtle dig at Walmart, inventor of the U.S. supercenter model and a force in the online grocery market as well.
“The average consumer visits between four and five different retailers for groceries every single month,” the executive said in front of a smaller group of reporters later that day. What Amazon was doing, the executive claimed, was creating a one-stop shop that all customers crave. The obvious implication was that Walmart, the historical one-stop retail option, was not delivering on the promise.
