Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is looking to leverage its existing chain of “supercenters” to gain an edge over its longtime rival Amazon.com Inc.

Rather than trying to take on its main rival in e-commerce directly, Walmart plans to use its existing stores to offer customers faster deliveries, better customer service and more access to goods that cannot be ordered online. Walmart will also transform its stores to “edge computing centers” and its warehouses into processing and shipping centers for third-party products, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal.

Amazon has in recent years emerged as the most serious rival to Walmart through the strength of its online retail business and its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc. in 2017. Walmart takes the threat so seriously that last year it announced it was teaming up with Microsoft Corp. to migrate much of its information technology infrastructure to the Azure cloud in order to modernize its business operations.

The plans were laid out by Walmart executives during a recent strategy meeting that detailed how the company plans to deal with the threat from Amazon, the Journal said. It cites anonymous sources as saying Walmart will convert its stores into a kind of hub that will provide a much wider range of services, including rapid grocery and product deliveries. It will also turn its stores into “edge computing centers” that can enable new services.

One example is that Walmart’s supercenters could provide shoppers with “social experiences” such as eyeglass centers and hair salons that Amazon can’t do. Meanwhile, the edge computing drive would allow Walmart to rent out data center processing power to local customers, autonomous vehicles and even drones, the Journal said.

Walmart also wants to expand its warehouses to boost its shipping capacities, according to the report. This additional capacity would then be sold off to third-party sellers.

The retail giant is also considering new services such as faster product deliveries from local stores, wider grocery pickup and deliveries, and in-store health clinics. The executives’ thinking is that the majority of Americans live within 10 miles of a Walmart store, and so it would be able to offer unique services to those people that Amazon cannot deliver.

Walmart is also said to be talking to major telecommunications firms about installing 5G antennas on the roofs of its stores. That would help to boost its delivery services, so that customers can order goods online and pick them up from the parking lot at their nearest Walmart store, the Journal said.

Photo: Walmart