Walmart announced it’s adding its 16-foot-tall Pickup Tower fulfilment machines to an additional 500 stores by the end of 2018, bringing the total number of locations to 700.
The towers can hold items as large as a microwave, and in response to consumer feedback, the chain is now pairing them with Pickup Lockers for larger items. Large items were previously brought out by a Walmart employee.
According to Walmart, over 500,000 orders have been retrieved through the towers since they were first introduced, and it estimated that they will now be available to nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population.
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The lockers, of course, resemble those of Walmart’s No. 1 competitor, Amazon. Recent research indicates that Amazon’s lockers lead to increased brick-and-mortar sales thanks to the add-on purchases from the consumers making use of them.
Walmart is also testing a fleet of stock-monitoring machines.
