Vazquez, the CEO of Walmart.com, told BusinessWeek he expects as much as a 30 percent gain in online sales this holiday season compared with last year. That would far outpace the 8 percent to 10 percent projected rise in industrywide retail e-commerce this year. Total U.S. holiday retail sales are expected to be $438 billion, down 1 percent vs. last year, according to the National Retail Federation.

Wal-Mart does not break out financials for its Web site, but Vice-Chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright has said it generates several billion in annual sales. That's a drop in the bucket for the $400 billion retailer, but certainly growing at a much faster clip than the company's overall sales, which rose 1.1 percent in the third quarter. By integrating the inventory of three third-party retailers under a program dubbed Marketplace that launched in August, the site now offers 1.5 million items, 10 times the inventory of a typical Wal-Mart Supercenter. New categories include health and beauty aids, which were added in October. "We don't have food -- yet," Vazquez says, smiling portentously.

Walmart.com Claims Top Sales Growth

Vazquez, an El Paso native who joined Walmart.com's marketing department in 2002 and rose to the top job about three years ago, says his goal is for Walmart.com to become "the most visited and most valued online retailer." Right now, the two most visited e-commerce sites are Amazon.com and eBay, and Vazquez clearly has both of them in his crosshairs. According to market research firm Experian Hitwise, Amazon is the leading online retailer with a 15 percent share of visits, while Walmart.com is No. 2 with 7 percent. (Hitwise excludes eBay as primarily an auction site.)

Vazquez claims that Walmart.com's sales growth so far this year has bested Amazon's by 1.4 percentage points. Through the first three quarters of 2009, Amazon's sales have increased 20 percent, rising 28 percent in the third quarter. "We're growing the fastest now among the leading sites," Vazquez says.

Several retailers, such as Sears, Staples, and Best Buy, are already offering Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season) pricing on certain products. Vazquez will also have to grapple with Scrooge-like consumer sentiment this year. More than three-quarters [77 percent] of American consumers feel pressured by debt this holiday season, according to a new survey by America's Research Group and UBS. Of those, 65 percent say they will spend less this year. New research from Nielsen, meanwhile, found that those who do plan to shop online this holiday season expect to spend significantly less. (continued...)

1  |  2  |  Next Page >

 

© 2010 Business Week Online under contract with MarketWatch. All rights reserved.