Articles

On Prime Day 2019, the biggest winners were known brands and Amazon devices, as Amazon-owned private label brands took a back seat, according to Marketplace Pulse research. Over a million products were available with a Prime Day deal, but as competing retailers like Walmart and Target launched their shopping events, Amazon shifted focus to exclusive products and new product launches.

The number of AmazonBasics best-sellers has grown by fifty percent in a year - from just over 700 in July 2018 to surpassing 1,000 this July. Amazon continues to launch new products, validate demand for them, and stop selling those which fail to attract customers.

Less than 24% of the top Amazon third-party sellers are large resellers, each representing hundreds of brands on Amazon. Their share of the top sellers has been decreasing by two percentage points a year - down from 26% in 2018, 29% in 2017, and 31% in 2016 - indicating the challenges of growing a reseller type business on Amazon.

More than three-quarters of Amazon searches are unbranded, seeking for generic products rather than name brands. Search terms highlight how Amazon shoppers' behavior is shifted from a brand-driven world observed elsewhere to a needs-based decision process.

Amazon has single-handedly - and permanently - raised the bar for convenience in online shopping. However, across the digital sector, some people are asking what the long-term negatives of convenience are. This convenience driving the Amazon flywheel hides some severe issues.

There are close to two million different brands on Amazon. Every second it gets bombarded with new brands, new (often) fake reviews, and new sellers. In all that noise, it tries to find products consumers would like.

Walmart one-day delivery is available for 130,000 products in four cities: Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Ten million products are available on Amazon one-day delivery, in a lot more cities than four.

Target reported e-commerce sales growth of 42% in the first quarter of 2019, almost all of which can be attributed to its stores - Target’s stores handled more than 80% of the first quarter e-commerce volume. What is more, same-day fulfillment services (Order Pick Up, Drive Up and Shipt) drove more than half of the company’s e-commerce sales growth and were all shipped directly from stores.

In ten years since 2009, e-commerce share of retail spending in the U.S. has grown from 3.8% to 10.2%. Last quarter it for the first time surpassed 10%.

Amazon's retail platform is built on legacy principles of the wholesale past. As it slowly readjusts to offer more data and better tools for brands, brands are innovating outside of Amazon, leaving it, together with the rest of retailers, watching from the sidelines.