Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez says the Walmart (NYSE: WMT) website’s holiday sales are growing two or three times faster than Web sales overall, according to Associated Press.
At that pace, in addition to 22 percent growth so far this year, the world's largest retailer is coming closer to dominating the Web the way it does cities and towns across the U.S. That would mean eventually dethroning online retail leader Amazon.com, whose sales hit $19.17 billion in the 2008 calendar year.
Penny Stock Professor, a leading financial publication, is pleased to alert investors of stocks on the move. Sign Up for our Free Penny Stock Picks.
Walmart.com already controls nearly 8 percent of online holiday retail traffic, behind only Amazon.com, which has 15 percent this year, according to Experian Hitwise, a Web traffic measuring firm that monitors visits to 500 merchants' sites.
Walmart.com, which in October started selling such personal-care products as diapers, beauty items and over-the-counter medication -- has about 1.5 million offerings, including nearly 1 million that outside retailers sell through it. That's about 10 times more goods than a typical Walmart store.
Amazon's sales still dwarf those at Walmart.com, which doesn't report its results independently from the $400 billion in overall revenue at parent Wal-Mart Stores Inc.; Vice Chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright has said Wal-Mart's online business generates several billion dollars a year.
However, Vazquez said Walmart.com's growth has topped Amazon's by 1.4 percentage points in the first three quarters this year, though he declined to offer a specific sales figure. Amazon.com's sales rose 20.3 percent in the nine months that ended in September, which implies that Walmart.com's rose 21.7 percent for the nine months that ended in October.
Vazquez said traffic to Walmart.com's book and DVD section more than doubled after he launched a highly publicized price war over top-selling books in October and then DVDs in early November that sent competitors like Target.com (NYSE: TGT) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) scrambling to match its prices.
Vazquez, 38, has led the site since early 2007 at its office in Brisbane, Calif., which is near Silicon Valley and more than 2,000 miles from the company's Arkansas headquarters. Always seeking ways to boost sales, he hopes to further experiment with social media like Facebook and Twitter, especially as increasing numbers of Walmart customers get comfortable shopping online.
He also plans to integrate the Web business more with brick-and-mortar Walmart stores. Walmart.com customers already pick up about 40 percent of their orders at nearby stores for free. The company is testing drive-through windows in Chicago and Minneapolis areas where customers can pick up online orders like fast food.
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/pennystockspro
Sign up for the free Penny Stock Professor newsletter. To subscribe, enter your e-mail address into the frame at the bottom of this press release or visit our website.
About Us
Penny Stock Professor is a leading stock web site that allows investors and interested parties to research stocks that are on the move. We also track small cap companies that are on the brink of a financial breakout. To feature a company on our web site please contact us at the email listed below.
Please click here to read the full disclaimer.
