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The
retailer will roll out the free service from this month in
certain U.S. cities after trial runs proved popular, Michael
Bender, chief operating officer of Wal-Mart's global ecommerce,
wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.
Shoppers have to choose a pick up time and drive into a nearby
store's parking lot, where associates would load the items into
their cars, Wal-Mart said.
The service will be available in Atlanta, Georgia; Charlotte and
Fayetteville, North Carolina; Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah;
Nashville, Tennessee; Tucson, Arizona and Colorado Springs,
Colorado, the company said.
Wal-Mart said it will extend the service to more markets in the
coming weeks.
The $10.9-billion U.S. online grocery shopping industry is
expected to grow 9.6 percent annually through 2019, according to
a December report by market research firm IbisWorld.
One of the largest players in the market is Amazon.com Inc's
Amazon Fresh, which delivers in Seattle, New York, Philadelphia,
and northern and southern California.
Target Corp said this month it will partner with Instacart Inc
to deliver groceries for as little as $3.99 per order.
(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio
D'Souza)
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