The holiday buying season is upon us which means companies will go above and beyond to get you to spend your money with them. Walmart is leading the early charge as the major discount department store chain on Thursday announced a price matching policy for the holidays.

Through the holidays, Walmart will match the online prices of rivals including Amazon and Target.

Roughly half of the company's stores had already been doing online price matching in an unofficial capacity (at the discretion of store managers) but now it's official at all of their roughly 5,000 retail locations.

Walmart is essentially playing catch-up as rivals including Best Buy and Target already have online price matching policies in place.

It's a big move for the retailer as it attempts to combat an issue that has plagued retailers for years: showrooming, or the act of going to a retail store to look at something in person before buying it online at a cheaper price.

Walmart and others believe that if they can match the online prices of companies like Amazon, customers will opt for the instant gratification of being able to take a purchase home with them right then versus having to wait a couple of days for it to arrive in the mail.

Major retailers will no doubt continue to battle it out during the holidays which is just fine because the real winner in all of this is the consumer.