The e-commerce giant is looking past the industry to expand its reach, and rivals have figured out ways to compete.

“It took them a long time, but Walmart is now basically copying Amazon’s playbook,” Rick Watson, founder and CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting, said by phone. “The only thing that they haven’t copied is AWS, which they can’t really do. But advertising, fulfillment, marketplace, that’s straight out of Amazon’s playbook. They’re not really doing anything unique. Their answer is just to wait and see what works at Amazon and copy it. And, look, it seems to be working for them, and they’re more profitable right now.”

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