Walmart continues to expand key initiatives, striking a deal to provide website and app account users direct access to online rebates while completing its latest Open Call for made-in-the-U.S.A products with new items to sell and a new project to promote American manufacturing.
Walmart and Ibotta, a cash-back rewards platform, reached a strategic agreement to create and launch a new digital offers program on Walmart.com and the Walmart app, which will allow the retailer’s customers to access hundreds of cash rebates on popular products.
The retailer has recently sought means to strengthen its relationship-building work with consumers including Walmart+, the Walmart app and other programs that keep consumers in touch with its operations and offers. Unique to this program, rebate redemption will come in the form of cash provided directly to a consumer’s Walmart accounts to pay for future Walmart purchases. Consumers also can apply rebates toward a Walmart+ membership, grocery delivery and other programs and services.
Integration opportunities with Walmart’s financial services offerings are under consideration, too, and Walmart is joining the Ibotta Performance Network, which it characterizes as the first digital network enabling coordinated cash rebate delivery across large third-party sites, including social media networks, recipe sites and other platforms. Walmart customers on those platforms will receive digital offers for relevant products, which they can select and readily add to their Walmart digital cart for online or in-store shopping.
Meanwhile, Open Call 2021, held on June 30, included more than 900 small businesses from across the United States pitching products made, grown or assembled in the U.S. to Walmart and Sam’s Club merchants. This year’s participation represented the largest number of business owners ever to take part in the one-day event, with 167 products advancing to the next stage in the process to land a Walmart or Sam’s Club deal and another 705 receiving further consideration. The Open Call general session was hosted by Tony Waller, Walmart U.S. vp, constituent relations and racial equity (pictured above).
This year’s Open Call event included the announcement of Walmart’s new American Lighthouses project, a plan to unite key stakeholders in specific regions of the country to identify and overcome top-down barriers to U.S. production. In the initial phase, American Lighthouses will focus on manufacturing in the textiles, metals and motors, food processing, plastics, pharmaceutical and medical supplies categories.
Laura Phillips, Walmart svp/customer and business development and U.S. manufacturing for global sourcing, said the American Lighthouses project intends “to bring together key regions and various stakeholders to address obstacles, support and pilot innovative projects and provide tools and resources for businesses to invest in U.S. production, making the supply chain more efficient, sustainable and making it easier for U.S. manufacturing to flourish.”
