Published
Feb 14, 2017
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Walmart consolidates buying to compete with Amazon

Published
Feb 14, 2017

Walmart has confirmed it will consolidate its buying operations teams to better compete with Amazon. In a recent move, the retail giant told its vendors there would be changes to the buying operations. Previously there were different buying teams for store and online.


Walmart.com


Walmart is attempting to consolidate in order to remove the duplication of inventory, which will theoretically help it compete with Amazon. Amazon currently offers over 300 million items, and while Walmart has more than doubled its online assortment, it still only offered 20 million items at the end of 2016.

Walmart company spokesman Lorenzo Lopez commented that this would create "a more efficient process that accelerates how we bring the full assortment of products in stores to Walmart.com." The company has not elaborated further.

The self-explanatory decision to consolidate should have overwhelming benefits both for Walmart and its suppliers. Walmart will now be able to offer all items sold in store online. Currently, this is not the case, as many vendors in store have relatively low sales volume and do not have an e-commerce presence within Walmart's .com site.

The move to consolidate will also save resources for Walmart suppliers. Vendors who previously sold both online and in store had to work with Walmart's Bentonville purchasing HQ for in store orders and also had to work with the online team in San Bruno. Walmart's change now means they can consolidate their own sales meetings down to one team and one set of meetings.

As one supplier explained, the buying process was disjointed. The supplier went so far as to say it was "extremely inefficient for us and them. It was a nuisance." The move to San Bruno will streamline that for suppliers as well as for Walmart's internal purchasing.

Walmart hopes the move will strategically change the purchasing mindset of its suppliers by putting a greater focus on online consumers, thereby gaining a foothold on Amazon.

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