Wal-Mart's Latest Venture to Rival Amazon, eBay

Earlier this week, Wal-Mart staked a claim in the third-party marketplace business with the launch of Walmart Marketplace, a new program designed to give customers more choices at Walmart.com. Through this latest venture, Walmart.com has added nearly one million new items to its online product assortment and is expected to enable a select group of retailers, like CSN Stores, eBags and Dreams.com, to offer additional products, providing customers more selection and added convenience.

"We've added nearly one million new items to our online assortment with the introduction of Walmart Marketplace, making it even easier for customers to find more of what they want when shopping Walmart.com," says Kerry Cooper, Walmart.com's chief marketing officer. "Working with select retailers, known for their strong customer service and large online assortments of new merchandise, gives our customer more reasons to choose Walmart.com when shopping online."

Walmart.com carefully chose these specific retailers based on their strong customer service track records and large assortments of brands and products. Also, Walmart.com will continue to grow the Walmart Marketplace program with additional retailers over the next year. The program further expands its online assortment with new products and brands within some of its most popular online categories, including Home, Baby, Apparel, Toys and Sporting Goods/Sports Memorabilia.

Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps retailers sell through online marketplaces, said that Wal-Mart will be challenged to catch up to the industry existing heavyweights like Amazon and eBay. "They are a good four years behind Amazon, and Amazon has a hell of lead with a marketplace thatââ¬â¢s generated estimated sales of $4 billion to $6 billion each year," Wingo told InternetRetailer.com.

To succeed, Wal-Mart needs to recruit more online retailers that offer shoppers different and unique products, Wingo contends. "Online retailers may be more open to partner with them versus Amazon because they are actually much smaller. For its third-party marketplace, Amazon charges 8 percent to 15 percent depending on the category and Walmart.com has a chance to attract merchants if their fees are reasonable."

Retail consultant Burt Flickinger III told the Associated Press that Wal-Mart has an opportunity to use online sales as an area for growth, especially considering how the company's stores have saturated much of the U.S. market. He said Wal-Mart  can also draw online customers from the European continent and South Korea, where it no longer has stores. "This gives Wal-Mart a chance to close the widening gap with Amazon.com  and Apple," he said.

In the coming months, Wal-Mart will announce additional programs designed to further expand its online assortment for customers.