Walmart is the best alternative to Amazon, growing faster than Amazon

Walmart is the best alternative to Amazon.

As we all know, Amazon has an absolute position in the field of cross-border e-commerce and has always been the preferred shopping platform for consumers. However, Amazon's old competitor Walmart is constantly eroding its e-commerce market share ...

Walmart has been growing faster than Amazon over the past five years

Marketplace Pulse data shows that Amazon dominates US e-commerce with about 40% market share, and Walmart ranks second with less than 10% market share, far behind Amazon. However, Walmart's e-commerce growth has been faster than Amazon's for at least the past five years. Yienjun learned that Walmart had previously focused on the online grocery market until 2016 when it refocused on e-commerce.

As we all know, in addition to Walmart, new and old e-commerce platforms such as eBay, AliExpress, Shopify, Temu, etc. all occupy a certain industry position in the cross-border field, and have the opportunity to launch an impact on the e-commerce platform overlord Amazon. However, on the whole, Walmart is still Amazon's only competitor, or the best "substitute" for Amazon.

Marketplace Pulse said that other e-commerce platforms are too small and too niche to be a good alternative. Walmart is relatively better able to compare with Amazon.

eBay remains the third largest e-commerce sales channel in the U.S. However, while overall online spending has grown 120% over the past five years, spending on eBay has only grown 7%. After years of head-to-head competition with Amazon in its early days, eBay currently has an absolute advantage in hobbyists and collectors , but still has some gaps in other areas.

Target, a well-known American discount retailer , has also seen a growing e-commerce business, but 70% of its e-commerce comes from its store’s same-day pickup and delivery services, and its marketplace has only grown by less than 1,000 sellers in the past five years .

Shopify's annualized GMV exceeds $200 billion in 2023. However, Shopify is not a shopping destination with a single shopping cart. According to the fourth quarter earnings conference call, its market application Shop for online consumers has an annual revenue of less than $1 billion, which means that its e-commerce business accounts for a very small proportion.

Temu, Shein and TikTok Shop are the most eye-catching e-commerce platforms at the moment, but unfortunately they only attract specific groups of people, and their product types and prices are not comprehensive. It can be found that these platforms are currently working hard to expand consumer choices on their original basis. For example, Temu is gradually transforming from small accessories, clothes and other categories to all categories. From the current point of view, their threat to Amazon is still limited.

The wide range of product selection is one of the important reasons for the continued growth of Prime members on the Amazon platform. On the Amazon platform, consumers can find what they need no matter what keywords they search for. In this regard, Walmart is the closest to Amazon. Walmart sells more than 400 million products on Walmart.com, and its product catalog is very extensive. The feature of TikTok is that products can be discovered from social networks, the feature of eBay is that you can find a variety of collectibles, and the feature of Temu is that it sells a variety of high-quality and low-priced products...

Amazon also leads in terms of the number of third-party sellers, accounting for 80% of the market share of third-party sellers selling through the marketplace. Previously, eBay was a close second, but the lack of growth in the number of sellers on the eBay platform means it is losing market share, and the platform's focus on enthusiasts means it is more suitable for selling certain products.

Walmart has replaced eBay as the second place. Data shows that in the past year, 10,000 to 20,000 new sellers joined Walmart every month, and on average at least 10% were eventually approved by Walmart and became active.

In addition, Walmart also has a certain foundation in the logistics market and advertising. Overall, Walmart is currently the only competitor of Amazon!

In fact, the flourishing of many cross-border e-commerce platforms, and even one platform that can compete with Amazon, is actually a good thing to some extent. In order to gain a better competitive advantage in the market, these e-commerce platforms will inevitably invest more funds in the e-commerce field and treat sellers better, which will ultimately promote a virtuous cycle of the entire cross-border e-commerce market and expand the market share of e-commerce.

Walmart's e-commerce sales exceeded $100 billion, and sellers' sales were divided into two levels

Some time ago, Walmart released its financial report for fiscal year 2024.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said that Walmart's e-commerce sales exceeded $100 billion for the first time, with e-commerce sales growing 44% and e-commerce penetration reaching 25% for the first time. The growth in e-commerce was reflected in double-digit growth in store pickup and delivery, growth in the marketplace (partly due to a 20% increase in sellers), and a 22% increase in Walmart Connected advertising sales.

In recent years, Walmart has continuously increased its investment in the e-commerce sector. Data shows that Walmart is testing multi-channel distribution internally, which is very similar to Amazon. In addition, it is very noteworthy that in recent years, Walmart has begun to vigorously recruit Chinese sellers, and recently it has relaxed the entry threshold. Generally speaking, the platform’s vigorous development period is also a bonus period for sellers’ sales, and a group of sellers are bound to usher in opportunities.

Yienjun learned that many sellers have made a fortune on the Walmart platform. "Walmart's traffic is actually quite good. Some of my colleagues earned an annual salary of 500,000 yuan while working in the company..."

Each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages. Just as Amazon, the "big brother" of cross-border platforms, is "loved and hated" by sellers, the same is true for Walmart. According to seller feedback, due to the off-season, the order volume of third-party sellers on Walmart can be said to be very bleak. The worst ones have not received any orders for several consecutive days. To summarize the sellers' complaints, the Walmart platform has the following main shortcomings:

1. In terms of traffic, the overall traffic is not much compared to Amazon, and some categories are even less than 1/10 of Amazon.

2. In terms of traffic balance between third-party sellers and self-operated products, Walmart gives almost all the traffic to its own products, and most third-party sellers can only get a small share of the traffic.

3. In terms of system stability, Walmart’s system has many bugs, and many unexpected situations often occur. Moreover, the account managers cannot solve the problems in a timely manner. Sometimes the problems are not solved until three months later, and even the sellers’ requests for help receive no response.

4. In terms of seller rights protection, the phenomenon of copy-selling on the platform is very rampant, and it is useless even if the seller reports it and performs brand registration operations.

5. In terms of payment collection, the payment time is uncertain and payment suspension often occurs.

Walmart is indeed a hot spot. The growing nature of this platform means that it contains many areas that need to be improved. Business opportunities and challenges coexist. In the near future, many excellent players should emerge from the Walmart platform.

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