NEW YORK — Wal-Mart is sharpening its attack on Amazon.com.
The world's largest retailer is trimming its free-shipping pilot program to two days from a three, and it's cutting a dollar off the membership price. Membership is now be $49 per year.
The Bentonville, Arkansas, company began testing the new service last year in answer to Amazon Prime's two-day shipping, a big part of its domination of the retail sector.
Amazon membership costs $99 a year, which comes with a bewildering array of perks, including household product subscriptions, one and two hour Prime Now delivery, streaming music and video, photo storage and more.
"Prime has become an all-you-can-eat, physical-digital hybrid," Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos wrote in his annual shareholder letter in April. He wants the service to be such a good deal that you'd be "irresponsible" not to sign up, he wrote.
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And Amazon has thrived because of it. Analysts say that Amazon Prime members buy more frequently and spend more money.
Wal-Mart's program, called ShippingPass, allows users to purchase more than one million items, including the most commonly purchased goods at Walmart.com.
"We can offer faster and more affordable shipping because we have a unique fulfilment network that includes new large fulfilmentcentres, stores, distribution centres and our transportation network," Wal-Mart said in a company release.
ShippingPass is only a pilot program and Wal-Mart will not say when it plans to extend the service to all customers.