What to Watch: Walmart Closing In on Amazon With E-commerce Advances

There are some core competencies that Amazon and Walmart Inc. will never master: Grocery comes to mind for the former, and entertainment content, the latter. But the $514 billion Walmart’s gains in e-commerce are starting to shorten the lead of Amazon, whose gross merchandise volume in 2018 was $277 billion. During the recent back-to-school period, which is a barometer for the upcoming holiday season, e-commerce accounted for about 58 percent of the record 5 percent uptick in total sales year-over-year. The biggest driver of the expansion was Amazon — no surprise there. What was unexpected was that Walmart’s portion of increase was almost as big as Amazon’s. “Walmart is playing catchup in a very strong way,” said Craig R. Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners. “Amazon is miles behind Walmart in terms of physical stores, but not catching up to Walmart. Now Walmart is catching up on the online side.” When Walmart a few years ago decided to go all-in on e-commerce, “it was starting from a pretty small base,” Johnson said. “Now it’s working off a much bigger base, which is why it’s catching up to Amazon in a big way.” Walmart and other retailers have responded to Prime Day since Amazon launched

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