there was no way for Walmart to sell online more people would be shopping in the stores. So having an online store in some small way keeps people out of the stores and buying online.

Its a small percentage, but over all the stores it ends up being hundreds less people in the stores per day. This "technically" lets walmart keep less employees onhand during the day.

I saw this on CNN or MSNBC or something about Amazon.com vs brick and morter, and then a combo of the 2.