Walmart grocery delivery service goes online in California

Walmart grocery shopping offers home delivery

Walmart launched its long-rumored online grocery delivery service in San Jose, California last Saturday as a response to increased competition from online retailers.

Called "Walmart To Go", the grocery delivery service allows shoppers to buy food, medications, beauty products and household items and add a minimum of $5 dollars to have the products delivered.

Competitors Amazon Fresh, Peapod and Sears have offered similar shopping delivery services ahead of Walmart.

In a statement, Walmart said the service will only be for the San Jose area and will or will not be expanded to other locations depending on its success and reception by customers.

Some products that are now available for the Walmart grocery delivery service are apples, milk, grilled chicken breast, whole wheat bread, over-the-counter drugs and fresh produce.

Customers can visit the company's web site Walmart.com to order these items found in the actual San Jose outlet and have them delivered to their doorsteps. They will be offered a free-trial voucher depending on their zip codes.

The company looks to combine its established presence in the brick-and-mortal retail world with a Walmart grocery service via the Internet which was pioneered by upstart rivals.

It recently bought the social media firm Kosmix to form a new business unit called @Walmartlabs which will spearhead its social media strategy to sell more products. The willingness of Walmart to overpay for that acquisition suggests that it is serious in pushing online sales.

Customers are already anticipating the success and expansion to other markets of the online Walmart grocery service.

Posted by Melanie Mendoza on Sunday April 24 2011, 1:32 AM EDT. Ref: WSJ. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Shopping. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0