It was always the plan to bring things together, but just like the structure, it needed to be separate for a while for good reasons. We couldn't pick at store level the full Supercenter for a while. It's a lot harder to receive an e-commerce order and pick a toy at Christmas on time than it is to pick the strawberries every day, because you know where they are.
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Customers want to save money and time and have the broadest assortment of items, and we think that by bringing e-commerce and digital capabilities together with the stores, we can do things that a pure e-commerce player can't.
I think we've seen it all. The e-commerce store is the interesting one.
We love basket businesses, the Supercenter is a basket business, Sam's Club is a big basket business. We want to build an e-commerce business that's a basket business, not just a spear fishing exercise.
The stores are an asset, and they have a great assortment in them and they're close to people. Being within 10 miles of 90% of America is a huge advantage, especially with fresh food at a good price. But we must also, if you think long-term and you think about what the company wants to accomplish, you must have a big and important first-party e-commerce business, and you must have a marketplace, and the things that go along with the marketplace.
The unique proposition that we have is that we can link a digital ad back to a physical store purchase down the road.
Retail is detail, and that plays out throughout the international business as well. Today's portfolio has got omnichannel businesses in Mexico, Central America, Canada, China, but we also have an e-commerce marketplace in India with Flipkart and our financial services business in India, PhonePe - those are a bit different, but the other markets have a lot of commonality strategically.
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