How Walmart and Paramount will wage war on Amazon Prime
Walmart agrees with Paramount to expand Walmart + subscription program service offering. The goal is to rival Amazon Prime. Meanwhile, inflation affects the company's core business. All the details
According to the Wall Street Journal , Walmart has struck a deal with the Paramount Global group to offer content from the Paramount + streaming service to users of its Walmart + subscription program.
COMPETE WITH AMAZON PRIME
In the plans of the large-scale distribution company there is the desire to expand Walmart + by also offering a video streaming service, in order to attract more users and rival Amazon Prime, Amazon's paid service.
– Read also: How Amazon's final war will start at Walmart and beyond
Amazon Prime – which has about 200 million subscribers worldwide – offers not only the rapid delivery of products purchased on the e-commerce platform, but also the possibility of listening to music, watching movies and TV series and reading e- book.
MEETINGS ALSO WITH DISNEY AND COMCAST
In recent days, the Wall Street Journal also reported that Walmart executives were discussing a streaming deal with representatives of The Walt Disney Company and Comcast (the company that owns Universal Pictures and DreamWorks, among other things), as well as than with those of Paramount Global.
THE NUMBERS OF WALMART + AND PARAMOUNT +
At the end of last quarter, Paramount + had over 43 million subscribers. Two of the most famous series in its catalog are Star Trek and Halo , inspired by the video game of the same name. According to the Wall Street Journal , the agreement with Walmart will give Paramount + an opportunity for growth in an extremely competitive market, where some "incumbents" such as Netflix are showing signs of slowing.
Walmart introduced Walmart + in 2020, intending to replicate Amazon Prime's success and secure new sources of revenue beyond product sales. In the US, the Walmart + subscription costs $ 12.95 per month or $ 98 per year, and includes free shipping on online orders and gasoline discounts. The company then added other services to try to capture consumer interest, such as offering six months free on Spotify, the on-demand music streaming platform.
Walmart does not disclose the number of Walmart + subscribers. A study by Morgan Stanley published last May claimed that there were about 16 million users subscribed to the service, up from 15 million in the previous November.
THE COMPARISON WITH AMAZON
Amazon has invested heavily in enhancing Prime's offering, especially Prime Video, with original content and live sporting events. The service costs $ 14.99 per month or $ 139 per year in America. It recently started offering a year of restaurant home delivery via Grubhub.
RECONVERSION TO STREAMING
Walmart is not the only American company that is changing its business model based on new consumer habits. For example YouTube – the video sharing platform owned by Alphabet (Google) – plans to open an online store for streaming video services, entering a sector already beaten by Apple and Amazon.
HOW DO THE WALMART ACCOUNTS GO
Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, but it cut about two hundred company-level jobs this month. The company also issued a profit warning because the excess of items in inventory forced it to lower the selling price of some products – such as clothing – previously accumulated to avoid supply problems. This excess of unsold stocks is perhaps a sign of how high inflation is affecting Americans' consumption habits, at least partially modifying their propensity to buy.
Analysts expect Walmart to report higher revenue but lower earnings compared to 2021 this year.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/walmart-paramount-streaming-video/ on Wed, 17 Aug 2022 05:44:05 +0000.