DISCUSSION
Will having the same buyers for online and stores work for Walmart?
Written by George Anderson
Photo: Walmart
Last month, Walmart announced it was combining responsibilities for its online and store businesses under single executives in the areas of customer experience, marketing, supply chain and technology. Now comes word, not surprisingly, that the company will consolidate purchasing for its sites and stores into a single department.
Reuters, which broke the news, reported that the retailer’s vendors have been informed of the coming change. Until now, purchasing for stores and walmart.com have been handled independently.
In a memo to employees last month, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon wrote, “We were starting to see our stores and e-commerce teams solving many of the same problems and now we can remove what might’ve become more duplication in the future.”
The retailer is hoping that by combining purchasing duties it will be more successful in securing the lowest possible prices from vendors. This is seen as particularly critical if Walmart’s e-commerce businesses are going to narrow the market share gap with rival Amazon.com.
While Walmart may put the squeeze on vendors for even lower prices than before, the retailer expects its trading partners to benefit from a simplified buying process.
"The way it operated until now was extremely inefficient for us and them," an unnamed consumer goods vendor told Reuters. "For example, they would buy 5 million cases a year for stores and 500 cases [for] online and then make us go through a different buyer for online. It was a nuisance."