WalMart.com CEO sets sights on strong holiday
NEW YORK (Reuters) - If Halloween is any indication of consumers' willingness to spend on holiday goodies, this Christmas should be a good one for Walmart.com, the CEO of the Web site said on Tuesday.
"Customers are still spending for the holidays. Halloween was very good for us, so I suspect that Christmas is going to be great," said Raul Vazquez.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N), the world's largest retailer, does not break out Walmart.com revenue figures. But Vazquez said that while overall U.S. online holiday sales are expected to rise about 20 percent this year, Walmart.com's sales should jump between 40 percent and 60 percent.
Retailers are headed into the holidays on uneven footing, worried that the deteriorating housing market, credit crunch, and higher food and fuel costs will hurt consumer spending.
The National Retail Federation expects U.S. holiday sales to rise at their slowest pace in five years, and many retailers have said they are planning cautiously for the back-half of the year.
To try to jump-start holiday sales, Wal-Mart has already slashed prices on thousands of items, like popular toys, and it introduced Black Friday-type deals three weeks before Thanksgiving.
Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving that usually marks the hyper-competitive launch of the holiday shopping season.
But this year, Wal-Mart posted Black Friday-type discounts, like an HD-DVD player for $98.87, on its Web site November 1, and the items were available to buy in its stores on November 2.
This year, Vazquez said, the retailer will post special deals on its Web site Thanksgiving day. The selected items, many of which will only be available online, can be purchased through the Web site that same day.
Walmart.com is also planning special online deals for what it is calling "cyber-week" -- the Monday through Friday after Thanksgiving. It will offer special deals on twice as many items as a year ago, and it will post new items on its site daily during those five days, he said.
INTEGRATING WALMART.COM WITH WAL-MART STORES
Vazquez said Walmart.com is continuing to work on ways to integrate the Web site more closely with the retailer's base of more than 3,400 U.S. discount and supercenter stores.
This year, Walmart.com completed the roll-out its "Site to Store" program, which allows customers to order products on the Web site and have them shipped to a local Wal-Mart store for free.
Vazquez said site-to-store purchases now account for more than one-third of its online sales.
"It has exceeded our expectations," he said, adding, "We expect it to rise." Continued...
