Wal-Mart Hopes To Gain The Upper Hand Against Amazon With New Shipping Policy

The ongoing battle between retailing giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc WMT and e-commerce giant Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN intensified on Tuesday.

Wal-Mart announced on Tuesday a new shipping plan in which consumers can make a purchase online and receive their order in two days for free for all orders $35 or more. The new shipping offer replaces the company's prior ShippingPass program, which was a fee-based service that offered the same two-day shipping.

Wal-Mart will refund members who paid for a ShippingPass subscription.

Commentary

As noted by CNBC, Wal-Mart's new shipping program takes direct aim at Amazon's Prime service which also offers a fee-based two day shipping guarantee. However, Wal-Mart never saw much success with the initiative which initially cost half of what Prime costs at $49 a year.

Marc Lore, the new president and CEO of Wal-Mart U.S. e-commerce tactically took a shot at Amazon and said that "two-day shipping is really just table stakes" and "it no longer makes sense to charge for it."

Lore also stated that the two-day free shipping is "the first of many moves we will be making to enhance the customer experience and accelerate growth."

Leon Nicholas, the chief insights officer at Kantar Retail previously told CNBC that Wal-Mart was merely late to the game and couldn't compete with all of the bonus perks Amazon Prime offers, which include a streaming video library, cloud storage for pictures and much more.