Walmart and Amazon Set to Clash Over E-Commerce Offerings

Walmart announced that it plans to monetize the software and retail technologies it has leveraged to convert its business from brick-and-mortar to one that combines both in-person and online shopping for other retailers. Utilizing its strategic partnership with software giant Adobe, Walmart plans to integrate access to its ‘Marketplace’, along with additional online and in-store fulfillment and pickup technologies, into the Adobe Commerce Platform. Per Adobe, these technologies will be made available to both Adobe Commerce and Magento Open-Source customers. The newly inked partnership would enable Walmart to reach thousands of small to mid-sized retailers, and to tap into the same tools and technologies that one of the largest global retailers is using to run their operations. This partnership has the potential to enhance the number of available products sold on Walmart’s Marketplace, which is still largely dwarfed by Amazon.

Through the partnership, retail customers will gain the ability to enhance their offerings, such as store pickup eligibility and available pickup times online. This platform will also allow retailers to offer multiple pickup options like curbside and in-store. It also gives retailers the ability to provide their store associates with mobile tools to pick for orders, validate item selections, and handle substitutions. It equips retailers with tools to communicate with customers about their pickup orders, so customers can alert store associates of their ETA or arrival for curbside pickup. Another advantage of this partnership is that it will enable retailers to syndicate and sell their products across Walmart’s Marketplace, expanding prospective customers. Retailers would also leverage Adobe Commerce platform to reach an expanded set of customers by listing products on Walmart’s Marketplace and then utilize Walmart’s Fulfillment Services to offer two-day shopping across the US.

This partnership aims to greatly benefit the retail giant, as it offers new revenue streams associated with retail specific technologies. It could also serve as a powerful means to compete with online marketplace giants Amazon, as Walmart attempts to venture further into the lucrative e-commerce industry. Walmart’s Marketplace grew to an estimated 70,000 sellers in 2020. This was primarily fueled by a surge in online shopping triggered by the pandemic. Today, the marketplace is topping 100,000 sellers. Compared to Walmart, Amazon’s marketplace boasts an estimated 6.3 million total sellers worldwide, 1.5 million of which are currently active.

One of the main issues with Walmart’s online marketplace offering is the lack of its ease-of-use. Numerous smaller retailers have expressed grief over the complicated interface of Walmart’s marketplace as opposed to Amazon’s. There have also been concerns of inferior user experience where sellers have complained about waiting months to hear back from Walmart about whether they were approved to sell on the platform.

Walmart’s partnership with Adobe could help to address these issues. Adobe states it’s working effectively to consolidate its other channel solutions into a single, combined extension that would allow its retail customers to sell across multiple sales channels, including Amazon’s. It aims to use a single integrated tool for easy account setup and catalog syndication.

Walmart also hopes to enhance its ‘Scan & Go’ and checkout technology by coupling Adobe’s expertise in driving commerce experiences with Walmart’s sustained omni-customer expertise. It plans to utilize this feature to compete with Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ technology that enables shoppers to simply enter a store, grab what they want, and leave the store without heading to the cash register to check their items out and make purchases. Amazon also offers other retailers the ability to leverage this technology in their stores to help bring fast and convenient checkout experiences to more shoppers.

This would be the first time Walmart has made its platform available to other businesses who are directly and indirectly competing against Walmart. Although neither Adobe nor Walmart have yet to forecast what kind of sales this partnership could bring, it’s a route Walmart has been diligently pursuing to maximize its return on investment of these technologies.