During the holiday season, the demand for food increases significantly the need for turkey and stuffing. Large families make up the majority of the financial expenses present during shopping. Considering online shopping is becoming a norm for busy individuals around the holidays, Amazon has become a frequently used website for shoppers around the U.S. With that being said, Walmart is gaining and losing customers but is still one of the top consumer stores during the holidays .Buyers aim for low prices ,good deals, and convenience, freshness but if the prices and quality vary between the food sources, which will shoppers choose?

Amazon is an online store mainly known for its electronic and toy distribution around the holidays. Amazon food delivery recently became a new resource for busy families. Amazonfresh is a worldwide online grocery shopping service. For only $14.95 a month, a customer gains a subscription and is allowed to shop on the site, but is $15 really necessary for shopping especially if you’re already going to purchasing food online? The extra $15 could allow to get more grocery items if your were to shop in stores. Amazonfresh also provides a restaurant delivery service included with your subscription which is essentially the same as delivering from a regular restaurant, just adding the $15 fee. The shipping time for Amazon ranges from 5-8 business days which interferes with the demand for the product. Consumers will have to order a week prior to the holidays to ensure the items will appear in time. They also lowered free shipping to $25.

Walmart is a well known store around the world that sells basically everything, similarly to Amazon,which also is an online store.When you go to Walmart, there isn’t a fee to shop there and there also isn’t one for the online Walmart service. Shopping in stores allows the customer to gain a visual experience of the product that they can use to evaluate the quality of the product. In store shopping is also convenient due to ensured freshness and guarantee the customer is getting what they expect. Walmart’s main objective is to ensure freshness which is evident through an option for online shopping to be picked up in the store. Although Amazon may have more of an online selection, Walmart prevails by allowing the consumer to purchase available items and quantities such as food and hygiene products.

This boils down to the question of which store is better value for consumers? The graph designed by Clark Howard from Clark.com, briefly shows that the top rated items of the stores have very few prices in common. You can also observe that the prices on Amazon are more expensive depending on the item and quantity. According to Walmart, they had the lowest prices eight times while Amazon only had 2 good bargains. When calculated, Walmart was 17% cheaper than Amazon’s 15 items in total. Convenience is key because Amazon can be out of stock of your desired item which leaves you out of luck. Alternatively, Walmart will usually have more in the back of the store. Christopher Ryan, a writer from Medium.com stated his opinions on the delivery process of Amazon and the store pickup option given by Walmart, “ “Overall,” with Amazon Fresh, it’s pretty convenient to have food delivered straight to your doorstep, but you still have to expend a lot of effort to bringing it in the house and putting it away. So it’s not like it’s saving you that much time for the extra fee you pay. With Walmart’s approach, you just show up, get everything loaded into your car, and you’re off. Same amount of effort to unload and put the food away, but it’s much cheaper and since I didn’t really have to wait at the store, I saved a lot of time. Plus, the only packaging I had to recycle were the standard plastic bags that I usually get anyways.” Christopher’s views give a bit of understanding of the extra, unnecessary money being spent for Amazon shipping. With much consideration the winner is…Walmart! Walmart has been declared the winner due to the main online shopping vs store bought issues: price difference and convenience.