About Walmart's Idea to Crowdsource Its Same-Day Delivery Service

Walmart is considering a plan in which it would get its in-store customers to deliver packages that its online customers have ordered,according to Reuters, which interviewed executives at the retail giant about the still-in-the-early-stages plan.

It apparently is Walmart’s latest idea in countering Amazon’s lead in, well everything e-commerce, but particularly its push to dominate same day shipping.

On one hand, I have to say it is genius.

Who else but a retailer like Walmart would have the chutzpah to try to add value to its most important resource – its customers? In other words, here are these valued customers in the store, spending money and ringing up sales for Walmart –which is nothing to dismiss even in this recovering economy — but why not see if they can be sent off with a package or two to deliver as well? Like I said, chutzpah. And genius — the customers get a discount on their purchase, Walmart gets another flag on the e-commerce map and a set of shoppers that are even more eager to come to its stores now, and Amazon gets to invest even more resources to keep up with the customers-turned-delivery people that visit Walmart’s 4,000 or so retail network.

The Reuters piece acknowledged there are a lot of barriers to the plan, some legal, some logistical. Certainly I can rattle off a few: how can you trust that the customers will deliver the package, especially if it is valuable? What is Walmart’s liability if the customer-delivery person commits a crime while on his or her mission? Ditto the recipient – what if he or she hurts the delivery-person? What if the delivery-person gets in an accident en route? What if he just never shows up? What if the recipient isn’t there and the package, which was left at the front door, then goes missing?

Even Walmart is not sure whether this plan will ever come to fruition, according to Reuters.

Perhaps what is most telling about the idea is that Walmart is even discussing it at all. For a company that was somewhat late to the digital revolution it has clearly embraced thinking-out-of-the-box.

Consider its other recent idea to compete with Amazon – this week it also announced it would be testing lockers for its online customers. After a customer makes a purchase online, he or she would have two weeks to pick it up from a locker at a nearby store via an access code provided with the purchase.

It isn’t all that much of an advance in service, as Michael Harvey COO of CorraTech pointed out to me–Walmart already offers in-store pick up. The lockers just remove the trouble of having to stand in line or even enter the store.

Which may be what Walmart was targeting with this concept, or at least one of its goals, Harvey says – helping people stay out of its stores.

Follow me on this, because like the crowdsourced delivery system this idea has traces of genius too. There is a certain element of the population that doesn’t want to deal with Walmart despite its low, prices. They find the stores too crowded, the lines too long, the shelves too cluttered, the ambiance too low rent—whatever. “You know there are people like that out there,” Harvey said. These people wouldn’t mind scoring a low-priced DVD or crockpot though – they just don’t want to actually have to walk into the store to retrieve it. Hence, the lockers. They can pay for the item, go to Walmart and pick it up without the hassle of actually dealing with Walmart.

I realize there is a certain outrageousness to this idea – but then so is the concept of enticing customers to run an errand for you.

Forbes.com