Walmart makes another move to try to compete with Amazon (WMT, AMZN)

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Walmart Marketplace, Walmart’s third-party seller service, has added roughly 250 new merchants to its online marketplace since the beginning of May, according to Internet Retailer.

Walmart Marketplace now has about 550 third-party vendors, whose products are sold on its website alongside existing Walmart merchandise. Walmart plans to continue adding more merchants and expects to have nearly 1,000 new merchants added before the holiday season. The newly-added merchants will increase Walmart’s e-commerce offerings, which include about 11 million products, with plans to add as many as 1 million new products per month going forward.

Walmart’s push to grow its online marketplace is a move to further compete with Amazon. Walmart Marketplace began in 2009 with just six third-party vendors. Since then, it has steadily increased its merchants, and significantly added to its base through its recent partnership with ChannelAdvisor Corp. Since April 2016, ChannelAdvisor’s clients have had access to Walmart’s online platform, enabling them to automatically integrate their product offerings with Walmart Marketplace.

However, Walmart’s e-commerce business has a long way to go to before it even comes close to Amazon. The e-commerce giant has nearly 2 million third-party merchants, which offer close to 365 million products online, greatly outnumbering those on Walmart Marketplace. There is also a longer vetting process for Walmart merchants than for those on other platforms. On average, it takes six weeks for Walmart to accept a third-party vendor, compared to only one day for competitors Amazon and eBay.

Walmart is also attempting to compete with Amazon in shipping. It recently announced that it will begin offering a 30-day free trial of ShippingPass, its version of Amazon Prime, that grants customers unlimited two-day shipping for a $49 yearly subscription fee. It's worth noting that third-party merchants are not able to participate in ShippingPass, as they do with Prime.

Walmart is in an ongoing battle to stay competitive with Amazon, and it will most likely continue to ramp up its e-commerce operations in the future as it tries to keep up with the e-commerce giant. 

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