Walmart has been playing catchup in the e-commerce space, as market leader Amazon continues as the gold standard upon which all other digital players are judged. Thanks to significant investments in its online capabilities, including its $3bn Jet.com acquisition, Walmart believes it is making significant enhancements to its digital offerings which will help close the gap with rival Amazon.
"We're excited to see Walmart.com gaining traction," McMillon said on a recent earnings call with analysts. "We're scaling fast, adding 8 million SKUs over the last three months alone. E-commerce contributed 50 basis points to our Q3 Walmart U.S. comp, which is our largest contribution yet. It's great to see an improving e-commerce business complement the momentum we have in our stores."
Since Walmart announced the Jet.com acquisition in August it has been working quickly to merge the two companies and use its considerable scale to increase the operations of both entities.
"One of the reasons Jet.com makes sense for Walmart is the common ground we share with basket economics," McMillon said. "Walmart's advantage has always been in providing the lowest prices on a basket of goods, and Jet has created a unique way to deliver the lowest cost basket online. When customers build a bigger basket online, the economics work in their favor and in ours."
