I can anecdotally confirm that the Walmart Grocery website has improved steadily over the last few years. They got hammered with disrupted supply chains, the collapse of just-in-time inventories, staffing shortages and irrational consumer behavior just like everyone else in the pandemic. They also responded quickly with new services, a functionally redesigned website and much tighter control of out-of-stock handling. Had the joy with my last order of zero substitutions and zero unavailables...

For anybody looking to skip ahead to the real start of the video, where Scott Havens appears: he comes on at about the 7 minute mark.

it seem like a waste not to continue the jet.com. its a simple domain that is easy to remember.

I am sure Walmart did the requisite analysis to figure out it was a smart move to shut the brand down. Cost to maintain brand, trajectory, number of loyal customers, etc. That isn't to say they couldn't have made a mistake, but this isn't their first rodeo, so I think you can assume some smart people looked at a bunch of angles before making the decision.

Nah. Walmart totally makes multi-million dollar business decisions with less diligence and critical analysis than random HN posters.

I think of this as the social media Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. You see comments from folks with zero insight and no doubt no specialized knowledge of the relevant industry, recognize that they are likely just making an off-the-cuff comment without any value, open the next thread where it's less obvious how little industry knowledge the posters have, and resume giving their comments the benefit of the doubt.

I fall victim to it with some frequency. Almost any comments here about the medical industry, of which I'm a veteran, are just wildly ignorant - and spoken with the same strident confidence as comments about the airline industry (for example), about which commenters are likely just as profoundly ignorant. But then I don't know they're profoundly ignorant, and suddenly I think, gosh, that person has some incisive insights.

Because no multi-million dollar business has ever made a bad decision..

Of course they have. And when they have, it's almost always because of more nuanced reasons than off-the-cuff random internet posters are privy to.

I've seen several people make pretty glaring mistakes based on their nuanced understanding of the details of some situation, when an idiot off the street who knew only the basic, surface-level facts would have gotten things completely correct.

Thanks for your perspective. I think this makes sense, and is probably often true. That doesn't necessarily mean the comments have no value -- often they elicit discussion that makes the behavior make more sense.

Multi-million dollar decisions (taken literally it means several million, not hundreds of millions) equate to small projects for Walmart. This is a multi-billion dollar decision. But yes, I am speaking speculatively, so take it with a grain of salt.

Compared to walmart.com, though, there's no reason to keep it. As a consumer, I don't really know/trust jet.com.

There are class complications that make using the Walmart brand potentially problematic, though. People with college degrees who would shop at Whole Foods or Costco or boutique retailers look down on Costco but wouldn't have those associations with Jet.com. I'm sure Walmart has researched this but keeping both brands would seem worth it from that angle.

The first time I saw jet.com, I assumed it was for Jet Magazine. Maybe someone things it has to do with jet planes. I wouldn't want to have to do brand marketing for such an ambiguous name.

It works both ways though. People who would never set foot in a Walmart might order from walmart.com for convenience or price or because they don't really think about it when ordering online.

If they have a positive experience online, that could affect their impression of the Walmart brand in general.

> Costco

I'm almost certain you meant to say Walmart here.

No. People who shop at Costco tend to have the spare cash to buy lots of stuff at once and have lots of space to put it and so draw from a very different demographic than Walmart does, mostly. It's a bit of a Sam Vimes boot theory thing.

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Econom...

You said “Costco” twice. The second time appears to be a typo.

Oh, thanks. Yes it is.

> No.

Well your comment isn’t particularly coherent then.

Oops, that should have been "would shop at Whole Foods or Costco or boutique retailers look down on Walmart"

Walmart's brand is pretty toxic in certain corners, so I could see Jet being an "alternative" to dodge the association. Kind of like Tab/Diet Coke.

But I think basically anyone using Jet pretty much knew it was WalMart anyway so it didn't matter.

Exactly. This is the first time I’ve ever heard the name.

Like the post above said, much of the Jet acquisition was likely really just to absorb the IP and expertise, anyway.

That said, we recently ordered some patio furniture from Walmart.com after comparison shopping on Amazon and Home Depot. And I suppose next month we’ll find better deals on yet another site. Don’t get too cozy with any of these companies and keep your eyes open for price and quality drift.

I do know Walmart, and I don’t trust or like the brand.

Well, hundreds of millions Americans do. It's one of the strongest brands in the world.

Millions (billions?) trust Facebook too. Yet, Facebook kept the Instagram brand and it paid off.

Facebook keeps Instagram (and Whatsapp) as a form of market segmentation. Just like how Proctor & Gamble sells eleven (!) different brands of laundry detergent:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Procter_%26_Gamble_bra...

Presumably they capture more of the overall market for detergent that way. Maybe the same mechanisms do not apply to retail in general.

Yeah, it was explained to me once by a bid for shelf space. If there are 2 brands, a new one gets 1/3rd of the space, if there are 15, then a new one gets 1/16.

Therefore making P&G more money.

At the time of acquisition, I think the Instagram brand was more popular and recognized among users than Jet.com. Jet.com didn't become a phenomenon before Walmart acquired it. Instagram was already extremely popular when FB bought it.

Instagram had like less than 20mn users when FB acquired it.

If you peruse the HN comments from the time, many of them were convinced that this was a waste of money (though not the top comment, interestingly enough): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840

Brand trust goes both ways.

It seems plausible that as walmart.com becomes better known as a good alternative to amazon for straightforward items, it might actually make people trust the walmart brand more - and put more shoppers in stores.

I don't think it's a matter of trust so much as classism. I know some people who simply won't go into a Walmart because they don't see themselves as the kind of people who would shop at Walmart.

Different situation. Facebook and Instagram are social brands that signal which demo you'll find on each platform (at least at the time of acquisition).

Instagram's branding/demo was a big part of what FB was after.

*In USA.

Forbes ranks it as the #26 most valuable brand in the world: https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/. Just because it's an almost entirely American brand doesn't change anything GP said.

Interesting it's so low, considering they are the highest revenue company in the world (as of 2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...

The brand is absent from most countries.

So is it NOT one of the most valuable brands in the world then? Despite Forbes' list of valuations? What exactly in the original comment about the strength of the brand do you even think is incorrect?

Depends how you look at it. I'd say that if you value brand based on its recognition and not on its revenue/profit then Walmart is not one of the most valuable brands in the world. Just looking at the Forbes list i really doubt that MasterCard is less recognised around the world as SAP or Walmart, or Home Depot (operates in 3 countries) is more recognisable as Gillette or Ford... Forbes list should really be called "Worlds most valuable companies" not brands.

The original comment isn't about the value of the brand according to Forbes, but the strength of the brand.

I just say that the brand is strong only in USA but not so much outside. Not many people care about or even know the brand in most countries. So it's not a lot of strength worldwide even though it's valuable in Forbes and very strong in USA. Coca-Cola or Apple are much more strong worldwide.

As an American I have never purchased anything from Timmies or Tesco but I consider them strong brands.

Oh you named 2 stronger international brands. Obviously jet.com should have been kept then. Way to completely miss the forest for the trees.

Sorry I didn't want to upset you.

I'm not upset, I'm just absolutely baffled that there's such disagreement with the idea that you can be one of the best in the world at something without doing it all over the world.

> The brand is absent from most countries.

Who cares? Countries are not all equal. This is one of those "Either the sun will come up in the morning, or it won't. Two choices; fifty-fifty" arguments.

> Just because it's an almost entirely American brand doesn't change anything GP said.

I simply disagree that's a strong brand worldwide because it's only a USA brand.

No one even said "strong brand worldwide" they said "one of the strongest brands in the world". Does a professional athlete have to compete overseas to be recognized as being exceptionally good at their sport, if they absolutely dominate in their home country, and their home country happens to be very significant in that sport? If you're going to get hung up on details, don't reword them.

Would someone who qualifies for the Olympics for the first time from a powerhouse country not qualify as "one of the best in the world"?

Walmart has stores everywhere but the North & South Poles. There's a reason they employ over 2.3 million people.

Yeah it’s like milk tons of people drink it but it’s for babies.

Yes I wish they would have maintained Jet.com as their marketplace brand (i.e. e-Bay competitor) and left walmart.com as the place you can buy Walmart sourced, un-comingled, fulfilled, guaranteed merchandise.

> it seem like a waste not to continue the jet.com. its a simple domain that is easy to remember.

Seems like it would be useful to market to other demographics or customers that don't have positive associations with Walmart.

I already have a preference for Target, Walmart's competitor, because I associate Walmart with prioritizing cheap over everything, including quality and style.

see also: buy.com -> rakuten

// no amount of branding awareness tv ads are fixing the name recognition they lost with that one... still redirects though.

Even worse, rakuten.com is now the former ebates site? And the former buy.com is rakuten.com/shop?

Their branding strategy is garbage.

Rakuten bought ebates many years back (looks like 2014) but kept the ebates branding until very recently.

But, yes, it's confusing.

They're a pretty strong brand in their home country of Japan and I guess they'd rather be known as Rakuten worldwide rather than different names in different countries.

Yep, Kobo is now "Rakuten Kobo". I haven't yet seen this on OverDrive, which they also own. To my ear, the names don't go together quite as well, since one sounds very American/English, and the other sounds very non-English (and Americans seem to have difficulty figuring out how to pronounce it).

When Rakuten released a commercial devoted to explaining how to say their name, I wondered if their marketing dept realized what a terrible idea the name change was.

Why would you give up buy.com for "rakuten"?! What is rakuten anyway? Is this an established online retailer? First time I'm hearing of this company.

Rakuten is very big in Japan, pretty established. Like Amazon/eBay, but a bit different. They've also got global but quite cautious ambitions.

Interesting trivia from a friend working there, and quite unusual for a Japanese company: most (Project Management, Development, Management) internal communication above a certain job-grade level is conducted in English, including in Japan.

This is true and really neat. I was in Japan a couple years ago and met a product manager that worked at Rakuten and he told me the same thing.

We saw a Rakuten building from the freeway during a visit to SV, and we wondered what they did. Found out on Wikipedia. Que the Bader-Meinhof effect, we started noticing the ads on TV.

However, I have never heard of buy.com, but I have heard of rakuten!

Ditto: play.com -> rakuten

I did use play.com lots, but never Rakuten so far.

That may also be that I don't buy CDs, DVDs anymore.

It's a cool domain, but I don't think anyone is going to forget walmart.com exists.

Sure it’s a three-letter domain, but Walmart is one of the most recognized brand names in the US.

Who said they're getting rid of the domain? That would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.

It’s also interesting they decided not to keep it as luxury brand selling upscale stuff, leveraging Walmarts infrastructure but with differently targeted marketing, loyalty programs, etc. Seems it would have been perfect for that.

They also have a ton of advertising costs, branding costs, marketing costs, logistic issues, etc.

It probably makes a lot more sense to focus on a single brand.

Walmart tried to make Jet.com focused on large cities but that didn’t do much.

Mostly the other way around. Walmart's logistics gets products to consumers a lot cheaper than Jet's did.