Walmart.com is expanding to include retail offerings from third-party sellers. Both eBay and Amazon.com offer products from third-party sellers. Walmart.com's new Walmart Marketplace will be limited to specific partners at launch time. The Wall Street Journalreports that Walmart.com wants to become the most visited site.
Wal-Mart customers can purchase the products through Walmart.com, but Wal-Mart never touches the merchandise: its partners ship from their sites and handle exchanges and returns.
"Our vision is to make Walmart.com the most visited and valued online site," said Kerry Cooper, Walmart.com's chief marketing officer. Terms of the agreements weren't disclosed.
The move is part of an emerging effort by retailers to embrace the techniques that have made e-commerce companies such as Amazon and eBay Inc. successful. Adding outside merchants allows Walmart.com to considerably widen the range of products it sells, without taking on additional inventory.
Walmart.com has a ways to go if it plans to catch Amazon.com in traffic. According to a recent report from Compete.com, Amazon has more than twice as much traffic as Walmart.com. Compete says Amazon.com had over 67 million unique visitors in July while Walmart.com had over 32 million.
Walmart will handle the checkout and order processing of the third-party orders in its new marketplace but the third-party retailers will handle the delivery and customer service. Some of the third-party retailers included in the Walmart.com Marketplace at launch include eBags.com, CSN Stores and Pro Team.
The addition of products from other retailers can help Walmart.com greatly expand its product offerings but they have to be cafeful not to confuse customers about where they are ordering from. Customers will also probably expect the prices of the third-party goods to be comparable to the prices found in Wal-Mart stores. Seeking Alpha has more details on Walmart's new service here.
