I’ve seen that claim made a lot, but I think it ignores the advantages Amazon started out with by not being a traditional retailer.
No Sears board of directors in the mid-90s would have countenanced running years of losses developing an unproven method of commerce at the expense of its existing brick-and-mortar business model.
Amazon had the freedom of not having to convince people with a vested interest in a profitable business model to blow it up and start over, and of getting to define its industry in the process, much as Sears had over a century before.
Sears could be Sears once, not twice.
Wal-Mart did the online thing and doing lose their brick and mortars.