Walmart Pushes Back on Online Commerce

While Walmart was long the conquering hero of the retail landscape, much to the chagrin of main streets everywhere whose mom-and-pop operations were largely unable to compete against Walmart’s sheer market power, the shift in the retail landscape that hit all physical operations even hit Walmart.

Now, forced to compete on ground where even its economies of scale weren’t a match for stores with no property taxes or physical plant to maintain, Walmart’s working hard to take back its primacy in the field against a host of new competitors.

Perhaps the biggest such move was the recent purchase of online marketplace Jet.com. The move will not only bolster Walmart’s online presence, but also potentially give it access to a whole slate of new information about online shoppers.

It may in turn be able to use that information in its own online operations and make these better for the new data.

Even better, Jet shoppers are a comparatively new market for Walmart, including those with incomes in the six-figure range who may not already be shopping at Walmart.

That’s not the end of Walmart’s push on new markets, as it’s looking to expand its China presence and its Indian setup with online retailer Flipkart, which will give Walmart a significant new presence in the second most populated nation on Earth.

Given that Amazon likewise posed plans to expand operations in India, Walmart has to be prepared for such things. It cannot afford to not operate in markets where Amazon will operate, if it wants any hope of holding its supremacy.

Right now, Walmart’s ahead by a big margin—$499.4 billion in revenue against Amazon’s $99 billion—but growth is clearly slowing for Walmart and gaining for Amazon.

It’s also worth noting that Walmart has been pushing toward mobile payments as well, and that could be a big help. It’s hitting Amazon on just about every front Amazon itself is currently operating on, and that’s a good sign.

Walmart will have its work cut out for it in taking and holding online territory, but with the kind of revenue Walmart enjoys, it could theoretically buy Amazon; with a market cap of just under $400 billion, that’s not out of line. Rather than join it, however, Walmart seems out to beat it, and based on what it’s done so far, it may pull it off.