Amazon May Handle 30% Of All US Retail Sales (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Amazon's yearly sales account for about 15% of total U.S. consumer online sales, according to the company's statements and the Department of Commerce. But the Seattle e-commerce company may actually be handling double that amount -- 20% to 30% of all U.S. retail goods sold online -- thanks to the volume of sales it transacts for third parties on its website and app. Only a portion of those sales add to its revenue.

"The punchline is that Amazon's twice as big as people give them credit for, because there's this iceberg under the surface, but you only see the tip," said Scot Wingo, executive chairman of Channel Advisor, an e-commerce software company that works with thousands of online sellers. When third-party sales are taken into account, Amazon's share of what U.S. shoppers spend online could be as high as $125 billion yearly...
Amazon's share will grow even larger when they can offer two-hour deliveries, warns one analyst, while another puts it more succinctly. "Amazon's just going to slowly grab more and more of your wallet."

Comments

Fuck Retail

[Anonymous Coward]

Literally every time I go into a store there are less goods on the shelf. More cheap plastic crap. Lack of organization. Most shops stocking exactly the same good fro the same suppliers and more or less the same prices. Overpriced prices.

Sometimes you walk into a store (strangely usually toy stores for some reason) and they are Old School. Shelfs brimming with colorful, well priced products, filling you with an irresistible urge to just fucking buy. I have to walk past the Lego Isle to get to the games section of the local Toy Store, and it is DIFFICULT to resist temptation and I don't even own lego anymore. But that's really the last bastion of the retail I remember.

Head down to most stores on the high street and they're stocked like some estate sale of a deceased 90 year old. Retail assistants who don't know shit. Absentee owners. Chuggers everywhere. Decor and construction like a cheap TV set. Yes this even happens in malls now. Every store knows they have nothing to offer you but their 15% mark-up. People used to spend ALL DAY at the mall. That would be like a punishment now.

I fucking hate buying online. I hate the risk. I hate the delay. I hate returns. But fuck it retail is doing jack shit for me these days.

Re:Monopolies are bad

[kimvette]

Brick & Mortar businesses' response has been to cut back selection. Just TRY to find good precision screwdrivers locally, for example. Sears, Home Depot, Lowes, smaller hardware chains, etc - no dice. Frys has some decent sets but they're not here in the northeast so they aren't an option.

Appliances such as mixer stands - you'll find 5qt and under KitchenAid mixers with the weak motor and plastic gear case at many stores, but most don't stock the 6qt and larger models with the stronger motor and transmission with metal gears. Soo. I'm going to Amazon for that.

Monitors - Worst Buy is the only local authorized reseller for the ROG Swift monitor but no stores I've been to stock it. I went to Amazon for those. I'll be buying another through Amazon. Why do the Worst Buy "ship to store" for free shipping when I have to go pick it up, whereas ordering from Amazon gets me free shipping to my door, with better customer service?

Klipsch speakers - I can't get the Reference Series at local authorized retailers, even at the "Mangolia" outlets at Best Buy. They stock plenty of the Synergy line (which isn't bad, but isn't great), so again, I've been turning to online retailers for Reference-series speakers.

That's just a small handful of examples but I could list so many more. I try to shop local, but when the stores stick to carrying low-end crap I'm forced to shop online. It seems like retailers only want to sell low-end items that need replacing after six months to a year rather than higher end product lines that actually last.