The retail giant has moved its Cyber Monday sale to the day after Thanksgiving to keep competitive.
Walmart has announced that its Black Friday mobile commerce will be the new Cyber Monday this year. The move was taken to help to avoid a detrimental shopping lull over the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Instead of making people wait for online sales, Walmart is evening out the in-store and mobile experience.
Many have speculated that dragging out Black Friday mobile commerce is a move to compete with Amazon. That online marketplace has offered stiff competition to Walmart. As Amazon operates exclusively online, it has had a considerable advantage over this vital holiday shopping long weekend.
Shoppers are now eyeing the retailer to find out precisely what the deals will be. This isn’t the first time Walmart moved online and mobile commerce ahead from Cyber Monday. Last year, its online sales were launched on a Cyber Sunday instead. Promotions began at 6pm that evening and carried over into the next day.
This Black Friday mobile commerce sale will also reveal a range of new Walmart online shopping features.
This holiday shopping season will also represent the first real test to Walmart’s massive online overhaul. It has made widespread changes to its standard website as well as its mobile shopping experience and app. Moreover, it has a considerably larger number of items available for sale online. Reportedly, this includes approximately 23 million items. Last year at this time, that figure was 8 million items.
A sizeable portion of that increase is due to the rising number of marketplace sellers. There are around 3,000 marketplace sellers on Walmart.com at the moment. This means that shoppers will be able to purchase items on the website beyond what they’d even find in stores.
Recently, Walmart reported that its online and mobile commerce sales had increased by 20.6 percent. It would be safe to say that its website overhaul played a notable role in that growth. This is particularly true as this year’s first fiscal quarter saw only 7 percent growth.
Now, Walmart is looking to Black Friday mobile commerce to up the ante from last year’s holiday season price war.
