Walmart.com declares war on Amazon! Three real intentions revealed

Walmart recently launched an ad promoting a big online sale, indicating that it will go head-to-head with Amazon in peak season e-commerce sales. But in addition to this, Walmart is also trying to compete with Amazon on three fronts.

According to NRF, Black Friday is a key node for Walmart's holiday season sales. However, online and offline shopping activities on Black Friday are showing a downward trend, and the launch of Walmart's advertising campaign seems to be in response to possible consumption weakness.

Not only that, the launch of Walmart's advertising campaign also reveals its clear battle lines in competition with Amazon, including countering Amazon's dominance in online e-commerce sales, attracting more third-party sellers to join, and competing directly with Amazon Prime.

Fighting Amazon's dominance of holiday online shopping

Walmart dominates during the holiday season and on big physical shopping days like Thanksgiving weekend. But as consumers return to work on Monday, their holiday shopping shifts online, where Walmart is typically not the preferred platform, and Amazon has the upper hand.

Walmart's Cyber ​​Monday promotion is designed to get customers who shop in stores over the weekend to continue shopping on Walmart's website after the weekend, helping Walmart gain more e-commerce market share while squeezing Amazon's market space.

Building a stronger third-party seller marketplace

Walmart is working to expand its third-party seller marketplace, and it recently launched a new set of self-service tools to make it easier for third-party sellers to onboard and sell. It’s also offering support to D2C brands, which have mostly refused to sell through Amazon, and has pledged to bring brands that do well on the marketplace to the shelves of Walmart stores.

Walmart is leveraging its advantage in physical stores to compete with Amazon, which will help Walmart expand its merchandise selection, thereby attracting more consumers and creating a takeoff wheel effect.

This effect is also the foundation for Walmart to build its retail media network in the future. A strong market platform provides the traffic scale and quality that brands need, which in turn encourages brands to invest more.

Competing with Amazon Prime

According to the latest survey by Bizrate Insights, the number of Walmart+ paid members has been growing steadily since the beginning of 2021, with 16% of consumers saying they are members. Recently, Walmart also announced a half-price discount for membership subscriptions.

Currently, Walmart is at a disadvantage in terms of first-party data relative to its competitors Amazon and Kroger, both of which conduct nearly all transactions through trackable data.

Attracting more members and shifting more sales online are key to its first-party data strategy, and first-party data is the fuel for WalmartConnect. Therefore, Walmart is willing to sacrifice a lot of profit margins in the short term to attract more members.

Walmart's flywheel strategy is now even more prominent, and it's not shying away from competing with Amazon in the process. The bigger its foothold in e-commerce gets, the faster the flywheel will turn, which is why Walmart is pushing e-commerce sales hard this holiday season.

Editor✎ Ashley/

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