Walmart Steps Up Its Online Presence in Brazil

Just when you thought ecommerce was everywhere it could ever hope to be, sometimes you find a move that points out how far we have yet to go. New reports say that Walmart is about to drop a ton of cash in Brazil, stepping up online operations and pulling together the physical and online operations together to make a Walmart much more focused on ecommerce in general.

The current word says that Walmart Brazil is about to spend around $464 million over the next four years to not only combine its physical with its ecommerce operations, but also bring out more ecommerce operations in general, giving it an expanded online marketplace. This follows the growing overall popularity of online marketplaces, which allow third-party sellers the ability to access a major corporation’s website to take advantage of the major corporation’s reach to sell products direct to the consumer.

Reports further suggest that this was done largely in response to the growing number of retail operations in Brazil in general. Walmart apparently craved a way to differentiate itself in the rapidly-tightening market, and decided to not only take on larger ecommerce operations, but also step into some remodeling efforts to make the physical operation more appealing as well.

The Brazilian market itself is ripe for economic expansion; not only is it coming out of a recession lasting fully two years—the longest the country had ever seen—but employment is starting to pick up, which is driving at least some of that retail burst.

Take an economy with plenty of pent-up demand following the longest recession the country’s ever seen, and give it a likewise plenty of shiny new storefronts and online shopping options. What do you get? You get what Walmart Brazil likely hopes is a big new rush of profit for a store that had likely been short on same for the last two years. There was a recession on, you know. That’s in the midst of a gradual move to online shopping and mobile payments anyway, so it’s not surprising to see Walmart Brazil start to back the online shopping horse a lot harder.

Brazil may be getting ready for a shopping renaissance, and if Walmart has anything to say about it, a lot of it will be done online.