• Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, December 15, 2009 11 AM

In order to compete against, nay, topple Amazon.com, Wal-Mart Stores has begun offering Chicago-area customers drive-through convenience in picking up online purchases. In other cities, Wal-Mart has posted new service desks at the front of stores to make it easier for shoppers to get their orders.

"There was a time when the online and offline businesses were viewed as being different," said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez. "Now we are realizing that we actually have a physical advantage thanks to our thousands of stores, and we can use it to become No. 1 online." Heading into Christmas, the company said 40% of its online orders are being delivered through stores.

Miguel Bustillo and Geoffrey A. Fowler write that this holiday season, the Bentonville, Ark.-based behemoth is aiming at what it sees as Amazon's Achilles' heel: the costs and delays of shipping online purchases to buyers. They say Wal-Mart and other old-school retailers are sharply increasing efforts to link stores and Web sales as a broad shift to Internet shopping is gaining momentum in the bad economy.

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