Walmart wants to expand e-commerce in China

Retail giant Walmart is planning to boost its e-commerce operations in China to close the gap to major e-commerce players Alibaba and JD.com and take a bigger slice of China's e-commerce pie, now the world's biggest after surpassing the US.

But this may take some time as the gap is currently considerable: While market leader Alibaba has a share of 46.9 percent of China's online market and second-ranked JD.com of considerable 20.1 percent, Walmart's share just comes to a mere 1.6 percent and rank 6, according to Euromonitor International.

In total numbers, Walmart's 250 Yihaodin hubs in 200 cities (concentrated in eight major cities like Beijing and Shanghai) are pitted against Alibaba's 14,000 hubs and pick-up stations and JD.com 6,000 delivery and pick-up stations across China.

Walmart took full ownership of the B2C e-commerce website Yihaodian in July 2015 after first investing in the online grocery platform in May 2011 and acquiring a majority share in 2012. Yihaodian, founded by former Dell executives Gang Yu and Junling Liu in 2008, offer virtual stores with images of grocery items that customers can scan with their mobile phones, purchase them online and have them delivered to their doorstep, in some places within three hours or overnight.

Image: Yihaodian website