Chicago/San Francisco — When Wal-Mart Stores bought online retailer Jet.com for $3bn in 2016, it marked a crucial moment — the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailer, after years of ceding e-commerce leadership to arch-rival Amazon, intended to compete. On Friday, Amazon.com countered. With its $14bn purchase of grocery chain Whole Foods Market, the largest e-commerce firm announced its intention to take on Wal-Mart in the brick-and-mortar world. The two deals make it clear that the lines that divided traditional retail from e-commerce are disappearing and sector dominance will no longer be bound by e-commerce or brick-and-mortar, but by who is better at both. Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods also brings disruption to the $700bn US grocery sector, a traditional area of retailing that stands on the precipice of a price war. German discounters Aldi and Lidl are battling Wal-Mart, which controls 22% of the US grocery market, with each vowing to undercut whatever price the others off...
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