No one thinks the internet is a fad at HQ and you have no basis for that. We just bought a 3 billion dollar online retailer and put their CEO in charge of Walmart.com and online strategy is a part of every weekly buyer meeting in the company.
No time in the near future will people not shop in person, the online market is under 10% and people like to shop in person.
Product prices will not rise with internal labor costs; our product flow is currently not optimized which adds a lot of labor that you do not see. As that changes those labor will shoft to the store floor and create a better customer experience. Combine that with procate brands (higher margin) and your overall margin will continue to drop.
If you think someone is far behind in any online business you are underestimating how quickly those things can turn around in a massive company with tens of thousands of people working on the problem.
I had a half hour debate in my head on this topic the other day; this is a great post thank you! I work at Walmart HQ and I think people underestimate their size and don't always consider what position that puts them in. They are investing heavily in private brands from grocery to apparel which will drive margins up continually over the next decades. I have heard that they are investing in some pretty crazy stuff to enhance the in store experience such as VR. We are actively cutting billions of dollars of inventory (I work in the supply chain) They are really taking a look at internal operations and reworking the organization the perform at a higher level. I don't know much about Amazon operations but I have a friend who is a vendor and he said they are a bad business partner while Walmart is a great business partner. Anything Amazon does with pricing Walmart is doing the same thing and we can push lower and that will not change for a decade. I don't think one or the other will "win" although most other retailers will die out. Amazon will get a big piece of the pie in the future but Walmart will never die, people love low prices (Walmart is synonymous with this) and customer service is going to be top notch at Walmart in 5 years as we invest in training, stores and wages.