News

Shopper turned delivery person? Walmart considers crowd-sourcing

March 28, 2013

Walmart may soon be crowd-sourcing shoppers for delivery services. According to an article on nbcnews.com, Walmart shoppers could tell the retailer where they live and sign up to drop off packages for online customers who live on their route back home.

Walmart currently uses carriers like FedEx Corp for delivery from stores, or in the case of a same-day delivery service called Walmart To Go that is being tested in five metro areas, its own delivery trucks, the article reported.

Joel Anderson, chief executive of Walmart.com in the United States, said in a recent interview with Reuters that he sees "a path to where this is crowd-sourced."

The likelihood of this being broadly adopted across the retailer's network of more than 4,000 U.S. stores is low, according to Matt Nemer, a retail analyst at Wells Fargo Securities.

"I'm sure it will be a test in some stores," said Nemer, in the article. "But they may only keep it for metro markets and for higher-priced items."

Read more about online retail.