Walmart and JD.com announce strategic alliance

Walmart and JD.com have formed a strategic alliance which will see the two companies work together on a wide range of business initiatives, covering both online and offline retail. As part of the deal, Walmart will acquire a 5% stake in JD.com, and JD.com will take ownership of the Walmart’s Yihaodian marketplace (but Walmart will continue to operate the Yihaodian direct sales business and will be a seller on the Yihaodian marketplace).

The Chinese branch of Sam’s Club also will open a store on JD.com, and the two companies will link up their supply chains.

Walmart’s China stores will be listed as a preferred retailer on JD.com’s crowd-sourced delivery platform, Dada. Walmart anticipates that will “drive online traffic to Walmart stores” and allow customers to order fresh food and other items from Walmart stores for 2-hour home delivery.

Walmart will continue to operate its own physical stores.

Richard Liu, CEO of JD.com, commented: “Walmart is synonymous with trusted-quality efficient retailing, and we believe that this tie up will increase both product selection and overall user experience. We look forward to further developing Yihaodian, which has tremendous strength in important regions of eastern and southern China. Yihaodian will continue offering the outstanding user experience its customers have come to expect, which we will further augment by leveraging our unparalleled logistics capabilities and breadth of product categories.

“We are also delighted to welcome the Sam’s Club flagship store onto the JD.com platform. Sam’s Club’s unique, high-end product selection meets the demand from China’s increasing affluent consumers for high-quality, imported products and has already proven popular in the Chinese cities where it has stores.”