Let's Get Ready to Retail!

By Stacey Vanek Smith,

Published March 8, 2018 at 4:00 PM EST

Americans are expected to spend $3.6 trillion on physical goods this year. Amazon and WalMart are competing fiercely to see which of them can get a bigger slice of that pie.

Even with the rise of the Internet, almost all retail sales in America still occur in physical stores, so WalMart's massive network of big box outlets gives it an edge.

But Amazon has a secret weapon: Prime.

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Stacey Vanek Smith

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.

See stories by Stacey Vanek Smith