Walmart Threatens eBay to Become Second Largest eCommerce Retailer

Walmart’s recent Q3 results showed again a huge increase (43%) in eCommerce growth.

And a new market share study among public companies engaged in eCommerce shows Walmart is now in third place after Amazon and eBay.

Notable in the study is that four of the five mentioned companies continued to increase their market share from 2017 to 2018.

Yet, the one eCommerce company in the top-5 that is losing market share is eBay and that should be a real concern to the marketplace’s management.

Walmart the eCommerce Company

With the growth Walmart has shown in eCommerce, it is now about time everyone looks at Walmart as an eCommerce company that happens to have over 5,300 stores in the U.S.

The company won’t challenge Amazon soon, but it is picking off eCommerce savvy companies one at a time.

With eBay’s floundering progress in its turnaround, there is a good chance by the end of 2019 Walmart’s eCommerce sales will eclipse eBay in the U.S.

It has the momentum; It is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at eCommerce and with its stores being more integrated into online sales and continues to grow its online sales presence.

Walmart also operates a marketplace which is increasingly gaining more sellers that offer a greater variety of goods normally not found at its stores.

Some people may have scoffed at the money it spent to acquire Jet.com and other smaller eCommerce niche stores, but the strategy seems to be paying off.

Some of the niche eCommerce brands and its collaboration with Lord & Taylor are designed to upscale its image that Walmart is not just a discounter, but one that can offer higher quality designer products.

READ MORE: Lord & Taylor to Launch on Walmart.com – Now Official

Whatever one may think of the Walmart brand, there is no question that in eCommerce the company has been following a path that has quickly changed its online sales presence.

U.S. eCommerce Market Share Sidebar

Recently we published an article stating that eBay’s U.S. market share of the eCommerce sales pie dropped below one percent.

READ MORE: eBay U.S. eCommerce Market Share Drops Below 1 Percent

There appears to be a significant difference in how these two studies calculated their market share data.

The study mentioned in this article only looks at public companies for which eMarketer would have financial data to review as it has to be public information.

The report from ISISWorld in the other article attempts to take a wider view by including the hundreds of thousands of private companies that are engaged in eCommerce. But that also means the data relies more on “survey” information than real financial information.

For example, eMarketer places Amazon’s market share at 48 percent while ISISWorld places it at 36 percent.

Readers should keep in mind the varying methodologies that are used to prepare these reports and studies and how that impacts the data.

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