Amazon (AMZN) is the undisputed master of online retail. Wal-Mart (WMT) is a superstore juggernaut. For years, the two companies existed in relative isolation, an either/or proposition for shoppers.

    Not for long. Increasingly, customers won't choose between buying online or offline -- they 'll want a retail experience that fuses the two seamlessly, according to Wal-Mart's Neil Ashe. Which is what the mega-retailer aspires to offer. "If we demonstrate our organizational structure to them, we've lost," Ashe says.

    As president and CEO of global e-commerce, Ashe is charged with leading Wal-Mart into a more digital future -- and sprinkling a bit of Silicon Valley pixie dust onto the world's largest retailer. On Jan. 6, he joined Fortune senior editor-at-large Adam Lashinsky at an intimate gathering of senior marketing and technology executives in Las Vegas to discuss the company's strategy.

    Wal-Mart is big. Full stop.

    The company pulled in $466 billion in revenue last year, earning it the top spot on the Fortune 500. It has long been a technology leader, managing logistics expertly to supply and staff its 11,000 stores around the world. But the retailer has been late to the e-commerce game. Ashe, who joined Wal-Mart in 2012 from CBS Interactive, has been tasked with making e-commerce central to the company.

    That will be more critical in 2014 as consumers pay less attention to the difference between buying something online and buying it off. Already, they are shopping at home, in stores, on the subway, at the office. They are comparing prices and checking out details on their smartphones, picking up online purchases on the way home from work, having their groceries delivered. And they have come to expect retailers to be nimble enough to meet them anywhere.

    Amazon gets this. It added grocery sales and video rentals to its website. It created its Prime service, priced at $79 per year with free two-day shipping. And it continues to build physical locations -- warehouses and pick-up locations -- across the U.S.

    Wal-Mart gets this, too. Wal-Mart has largely watched Amazon clean up on web retail over the past decade while it largely ignored the centrality of the Internet to the shopping experience. Ashe believes that shoppers' shifting expectations will work to the company's advantage. "This is about how we take the assets we have and make them contemporary," he says.

    亚马逊（Amazon）是互联网零售行业中当之无愧的王者，而沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）则是超市巨头。多年来，这两家公司相对隔绝地存在着，购物者不是选择亚马逊，就是选择沃尔玛。

    这种状况不会持续多久了。据沃尔玛的尼尔•阿什说，消费者越来越不会在相互隔离的线上、线下购物之间做选择——他们会想要得到一种线上线下完美融合的零售体验。而这正是这家零售巨头渴望提供的东西。阿什说：“如果我们向消费者暴露我们的组织结构，我们就输了。”

    身为沃尔玛全球电子商务总裁兼首席执行官（CEO），阿什负责引导沃尔玛迈入更趋数字化的未来——同时向这家全球最大的零售企业添加一些硅谷“魔法粉”。今年1月6日，在众多营销和技术高管于拉斯维加斯举行的一场私人聚会上，他与《财富》高级特约编辑亚当•拉辛斯基一起讨论了公司的策略。

    沃尔玛很庞大。句号。这一点毋庸置疑。

    这家公司去年实现营收4,660亿美元，从而使它获得了《财富》世界500强企业榜首宝座。它长期以来一直是一家在技术上领先的企业，熟练地管理着物流，向旗下遍及世界各地的11,000家门店供应货物，配备工作人员。但这家零售企业较晚才进入电子商务领域。阿什在2012年从哥伦比亚广播集团（CBS Interactive）旗下的互动媒体公司CBS Interactive跳槽加盟沃尔玛，一直负责把电子商务变成这家公司的核心业务。

    这一点在2014年将会更加重要，因为消费者现在不太关注线上购物与线下购物之间的差别。现在，他们已经开始在家里、在商店、在地铁上、甚至在办公室里购物。他们用智能手机比较价格，然而查清详细信息，在下班途中取走线上购买的物品，要求购买的食品杂货送货上门。而且他们已经开始期望零售商足够灵活，能够随时随地在一切平台上为他们提供服务。

    亚马逊已经做到了这点。它在自己的网站上增加了食品杂货销售和录像带租赁服务。它创造了亚马逊金牌服务（Amazon Prime）。这项付费增值服务的年费为79美元，提供免费的两日送达服务。而且它还在继续在美国各地建设实体设施，比如仓库和取货点。

    沃尔玛也做到了这点。总体而言，过去十年以来，沃尔玛一直在眼睁睁地看着亚马逊横扫互联网零售领域，而自己在很大程度上却忽略了互联网在购物体验中占据的核心位置。阿什认为，未来，购物者的预期转变将会有利于沃尔玛发挥优势。他说：“关键在于我们如何利用我们拥有的资产，让这些资产跟上时代的步伐。”   

    What does that look like? Ashe described Wal-Mart's Black Friday one-hour guarantees, a program introduced in 2012 and expanded in 2013. In a classic bait and switch, retailers have long promised customers who gather in line on Black Friday certain sales; however, they run out of stock quickly ("You know, then, they only have three items," Ashe says) and the customers are left unhappily nosing around the store. With Wal-Mart's guarantees, customers who stood in line for the entirety of a designated offer got the deal, period. If the item wasn't in stock, they were promised delivery before Christmas. On Black Friday 2013, Wal-Mart sold more than a million 32-inch televisions in an hour.

    Ashe has also been on a purchasing spree since he got to Wal-Mart, buying several tech startups (including Torbit, OneOps, Tasty Labs, and ShopyCat) that have experimented with social gifting, subscription boxes, and other trends that have popped up in online shopping in recent years. Very little of this new technology has moved the needle for Wal-Mart so far, Ashe concedes. Then again, the needle is fairly substantial at Wal-Mart.

    Wal-Mart is learning from its acquisitions, Ashe says. Which is the point. "We strive to fail," he says, explaining that failure is one way to prove that the company is taking new risks. It's the Silicon Valley Way. With $13 billion in revenue from Walmart.com expected in 2014 -- a number that is growing at a fast clip -- it's starting to be the Bentonville Way, too.

    那会是一种什么样的情形呢？阿什描述了沃尔玛在2012年推出并在2013年扩大的一个计划：黑色星期五（即感恩节的次日）一小时保证计划。在一种典型的诱购（bait and switch，指以销售低价商品作为诱饵，诱使消费者前往购买高价商品）策略中，长期以来许多零售商一直向在黑色星期五那天在店门外排队的消费者承诺降价销售部分商品。但是，他们很快就会宣布降价销售的商品已经卖断货了（阿什说：“你知道，也就是说，他们只有三件减价商品。”）而消费者只能满腹怨气地在店里瞎转悠。凭借沃尔玛的保证计划，在整个指定优惠时段内排在队伍里的消费者都会买到相应的降价商品。如果这款商品没有现货，沃尔玛将承诺在圣诞节前送货上门。2013年的黑色星期五那天，沃尔玛在一小时之内卖出了100多万台32英寸电视机。

    自从加盟沃尔玛以来，阿什也一直在大举收购，相继收购了几家科技初创公司（包括网站性能优化公司Torbit、电子商务开发平台OneOps、社交初创公司Tasty Labs和礼物应用ShopyCat），这些公司都已经尝试了社交赠礼、订购式定期打包递送盒（subscription box）及近年来在线上购物领域中突然出现的其他趋势。阿什承认，到目前为止，这项新技术还没有为沃尔玛带来多少变革。可是话又说回来，沃尔玛的规模相当庞大，很难迅速发生变革。

    阿什说,沃尔玛正在向它收购的各家公司学习。这是关键。他说：“我们积极求败。”他解释说，失败是证明这家公司正在甘冒一些新的风险的方式。这是硅谷之道。鉴于沃尔玛网站Walmart.com预计在2014年实现营收130亿美元（这个数字正在迅速增长），它也开始成为沃尔玛的行事之道。（Bentonville，阿肯色州本顿维尔是沃尔玛总部所在地——译注）（财富中文网）

    译者：iDo98