Amazon's Share of the US Ecommerce Market Is Now 49 Percent (techcrunch.com)

New numbers from researchers at eMarketer reveal that Amazon is set to clear $258.22 billion in U.S. retail sales in 2018, "which will work out to 49.1 percent of all online retail spend in the country, and 5 percent of all retail sales," reports TechCrunch. From the report: It started as an online bookstore, but today Amazon is a behemoth in all areas of e-commerce, fueled by a strong Marketplace network of third-party sellers, an ever-expanding range of goods from groceries to fashion, and a very popular loyalty program in the form of Prime. Now, it is fast approaching a tipping point where more people will be spending money with Amazon, than with all other retailers -- combined. Amazon's next-closest competitor, eBay, a very, very distant second at 6.6 percent, and Apple in third at 3.9 percent. Walmart, the world's biggest retailer when counting physical stores, has yet to really hit the right note in e-commerce and comes in behind Apple with 3.7 percent of online sales in the U.S. The report goes on to mention that Amazon's pace has not slowed down. "Its sales are up 29.2 percent versus a year ago, when it commanded 43 percent of all e-commerce retail sales," reports TechCrunch. These new numbers may renew the prospect of antitrust action being brought against the online giant.

Comments

And, why?

[hcs_$reboot]

49% is an amazing figure. Was wondering how come nobody was able to [really] compete with Amazon, so far. Just curious.

Re:And, why?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Amazon was propped up by Wall Street for years operating at a loss until they established market dominance. If you can throw enough money at any business model, you can't lose.

I remember laughing at Amazon 10-15 years ago because they were so overvalued. They were the poster child for P/E ratio scam stocks.

Re: And, why?

[hcs_$reboot]

Nope, others were created around that time and failed...

Re:And, why?

[lgw]

Amazon was propped up by Wall Street for years operating at a loss until they established market dominance.

It's almost as if capital is valuable, not just labor.

I remember laughing at Amazon 10-15 years ago because they were so overvalued.

Meanwhile, I just pocketed quite a nice chunk of change from the AMZL I held for 4 years. Growth stocks are fine when the company continues growing. And at only 5% of retail, there's lots of room to keep growing, but Amazon is "AWS with a gift shop" these days, and few care about the retail business.

Re: And, why?

[hcs_$reboot]

I buy from Amazon because no other competitor is around...

Re:And, why?

[aaarrrgggh]

I was in the same position; it doesn't necessarily mean you didn't profit off them too. I started understanding their value proposition ~5 years ago, but I never would have bet against them before that. Much like Salesforce.

Re:And, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon was propped up by Wall Street for years operating at a loss until they established market dominance. If you can throw enough money at any business model, you can't lose.

Based on what was obviously a very successful business plan. Propped up is an interested choice of words. Most people would call it investing.

Re: And, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're around. For example, Newegg sells computer parts and often for less than Amazon. You know why I never buy computer parts from Newegg? Have you ever had to return a bad CPU or motherboard to Newegg? Fuck that whole process. If they decide the problem is your fault they'll charge you a restocking fee. Either way they won't refund shipping, so you're out the cost of shipping two ways: once to ship the defective product to you, once to ship it back. They won't cross-ship either, so you have to wait for them to receive the product, inspect it, ship a replacement, and then receive it. A process that can easily take more than a week.

If I bought the defective CPU from Amazon, on the other hand, I just buy a new CPU and put the defective one back in the box and leave it on my porch, click a button on Amazon, and UPS picks up my return and my account is credited immediately. Within a day or two I have the replacement, and I didn't have to pay for any shipping for any of it.

I can't understand how for almost 15 years everybody claims they can't figure out how to compete with Amazon. That's bullshit. They know how to compete with Amazon, they just refuse to despite all the evidence from the market that it would boost their sales. They just can't get over that mentality that the customer is always wrong. It's going to sink them, and I have no problem with that whatsoever.

Re: And, why?

[rl117]

There are plenty of competitors, if you look for specialists in a given area. Amazon offers everything, and is easy to use, with flexible returns. They bank on customer laziness in not looking around for better deals. For computer parts, there are several big companies in the UK which do mail order, including ebuyer, SCAN, DABS, and many others. Same in the US. More often than not, Amazon is the least competitive, and as for the others, compare their pricing and get the best deal. The same applies to plenty of other areas, such as bike and auto parts, household stuff. Each area has companies which specialise, and which do good mail order service. Amazon is selling convenience at the expense of not being the most cost effective. With the amount of counterfeit stuff in the Amazon marketplace, Amazon for me is now a place of last resort, rather than the first. It was always going to be that once they had a large amount of the market they would raise prices because they could, but I think they will find that they are not irreplaceable when there are so many other companies ready to fill the gaps in the market. It's not like there aren't thousands of companies around who have the logistics in place to handle orders and returns.

Re:And, why?

[AHuxley]

How was the movement of goods done before "online" and in 2018?
The 1980's mall. The 1980's store with experts and the prices they could offer per sale.

The huge brands in malls the 1980's could buy in at low prices, use TV/print to build up demand and get people to need a product.
Delivery all over the USA of the same product was computer controlled. The shop and mall still had to accept the product, find a place to display it and sell it.
The "online" trick was to connect that same exisiting order network to a new computer in consumers home. The consumer became the "store" requesting 1 product along with a short list of other items.

That will keep working if delivery stays at a low cost per item.
Lots of people all want the same new product that can be pre positioned all over the USA in 2018.
Shopping as a fashion statement becomes a social status again. The car, the clothing, the ability to be seen spending. To meet friends while spending.
Coffee culture becomes shopping culture again.
The experts in a store who add to the enjoyment of spending and buying.
Lots of ways to compete, just not on shipping and price.

Re:And, why?

[hey!]

Because Amazon is a growth stock, the business equivalent of a cancer cell. If you bought $1000 of Amazon in 2004, you'd have almost $40,0000 today. This means investors don't expect dividends, they expect all the profits to be plowed into growing to pump the stock price ever higher.

Amazon has also had more effective leadership than most companies with similar ambitions. I think Bezos really ego-identifies with Amazon; that keeps him laser-focused on what makes Amazon a truly dominant player: it's cultivation of the customer. The hardest and most expensive thing in business is getting a new customer, so Amazon is obsessive on new ways to sell to its "Prime" customer base. Amazon puts its tendrils into prime customers' lives; gathering ever more information on them and providing instantaneous links between the buying impulse and consumption.

Look at the difference between Amazon's acquisitions and typical CEO-compensation driven acquisitions. Amazon's acquisitions aren't driven by empty buzzwords like "synergy"; they're about gaining a bigger footprint in its prime customers' lives, or obtaining something it needs to do that.

Amazon wins because it's better at selling shit to people than anyone has ever been. It uses its customer base more effectively than anyone else has ever done before. This is through a combination of new technology, leadership, and investor willingness to plot profits right back into growth.

In isolation this is a good thing. We are all taking a journey with Amazon in which the next step is a marginal improvement in our lives. We might not like where this takes us, however. Amazon is on track to becoming the single most powerful human institution ever.

Re:And, why?

[hey!]

Oh, you can throw money at a problem and lose. For most people overfunding is a recipe for loss of focus: money replaces decision-making. Most of the time the best place to be is to have just enough money to do what you need to get done if you're smart about it.

Amazon's actually pretty good at what it does. That's because it's more disciplined than other companies that have tried to throw money at the problem of growing large. That doesn't make it a good thing in the long term.

Re:And, why?

[Wrath0fb0b]

If you can throw enough money at any business model, you can't lose.

There are a lot of billion-dollar failures that show that you can burn money on a losing business model as well.

Re:And, why?

[hey!]

"Cultivation of the customer" - you mean, mass psychological manipulation?

Yes, that's certainly party of what I mean. It's not the whole story; Amazon is really, really good at fulfillment. But they aren't satisfied with simply serving customers.

Re:And, why?

[swillden]

Because Amazon is a growth stock, the business equivalent of a cancer cell.

That's ridiculous. Dividends and price growth are both completely legitimate ways of providing an ROI to investors, and growth is the right choice as long as the business still has good growth prospects. When it's reached saturation and can't really benefit from major capital investment, then profits are paid out as dividends. Paying dividends while simultaneously trying to fund growth from new stock issuance, or bond issuance, or bank borrowing is almost always stupid; if the company has use for money and has profits, it makes sense to just plow profits back in rather than trying to get other money.

When Amazon stops growing, for whatever reason, it'll change gears and start issuing dividends. For now it's doing what makes sense, nothing remotely "cancerous" about it.

Re:And, why?

[q_e_t]

Failing fast and often works if and only if you have sufficient capital or revenue. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, and it's been the death of many companies...

Re: And, why?

[q_e_t]

Amazon stocks many things, but there are also many items it does not, but other, more specialist online stores do, or offer a better selection of at a better price. Examples include specialist paints and pet food.

I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) but.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to use other sites (Walmart, Target)..etc., especially since sometimes they are cheaper... but they are bloated, way too slow (especially Walmart), display far too many irrelevant items / information when trying to find something...

Basically poor IT execution of their online experience.. its crappy compared to Amazon..

Fix that, and they'll get marketshare.

Re:easy script

[wolfheart111]

Its not like its hard to write/buy.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[Anne Thwacks]

crappy compared to Amazon..

And that is not easy to achieve. Amazon is so crappy, I prefer to go down to the high street at shop in a real store!

Disclaimer: I live in the UK where we don't have Target or Walmart.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[hcs_$reboot]

Ok so you say incompetence is the problem.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[hcs_$reboot]

On the "Prime" side, comparing Amazon Videos to Netflix, is like comparing MS Paint and Photoshop.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[Anonymous Coward]

MSPaint is free, Photoshop costs money. I use MSPaint all the time for quick screenshot cropping.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[hcs_$reboot]

MSPaint is free

So? Care to share the link to the free MSPaint Linux version? Or do I have to purchase a Windows license?

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[hcs_$reboot]

https://www.gimp.org/

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[devslash0]

But are you sure you laid out things in the right order? In your comparison it's Amazon Video that's Photoshop. Netflix content is simply crap. I ended up browsing titles for half an hour in order to find anything worth watching. I also don't care about Netflix Originals/Exclusives. There are a few decent ones but most of them are rip-offs.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[GodfatherofSoul]

There's nothing remarkable about Amazon to me. The reviews aren't reliable, you do searches you still see the wrong items come back. I've been duped into buying the wrong thing a few times because Amazon searches returned items they thought were close enough.

My problem with brick-and-mortar search engines is they don't make it easy enough to simply find the closest store with the item I want. If I'm going to Walmart or Target websites, that usually means I want it *now*.

As usual, BeauHD is wrong and should feel bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Please try to write accurate headlines, BeauHD. Amazon's share of the US ecommerce market is not *now* 49%. It is on target to become 49% by the end of the year. Your headline is wrong.

At least you didn't inexplicably put the Digital Equipment Corporation logo on this posting, like you do for every post with the word "digital" in its title.

Re:As usual, BeauHD is wrong and should feel bad

[PolygamousRanchKid]

At least you didn't inexplicably put the Digital Equipment Corporation logo on this posting, like you do for every post with the word "digital" in its title.

In the future, the DEC logo will soon be replaced with the Compaq logo since DEC was bought by Compaq.

In the far, far future, the Compaq logo will be replaced by the HP logo, since Compaq was bought by HP.

But hey, but cut the editors some slack . . . Slashdot is a free service, and well worth every penny I pay for it.

Maybe the editors intentionally make mistakes . . . so the complainers will have something trivial to complain about . . . ?

Instead of complaining about more serious issues . . .

Re:easy script

[Anonymous Coward]

I find AmazonTM the gretest thing since sliced bread and helps taking care of my health at retirement with the Amazon long tail revenue streams!

All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. You can even make video of yourself going to pick up AmazonTM parcel at the convenience store and post it on your youtube channel for more redundant revenue streams.

They also have a wide supply, the best of latte and clif/power bars at the best cost, espicially if you make a friend buy them for you with your own affiliate link!

Also, I still use my iPhone 6s and reduce my monthly bill from $80 to $50. As a phone and a video camera, the iPhone 6s isn't obsolete and I use it to make my videos on youtube. As a Sprint very special customer for 20+ years, Sprint will always give me a new iPhone for free if I decide to stop using the 6s as a phone in the next several years.

Bonus: get some silver coins, view recommendations on my special Youtube channel dedicated to the topic! They constitute a fail-safe insurance strategy for your retirement!
--
Going to a comic con this weekend? Check out my channel

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[hcs_$reboot]

I agree that Netflix content is crap - more and more so, sadly. Was talking about the interface, the site, design, subtitles etc... Way better than Amazon Prime.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[lgw]

What's I'd really like is the Linux version of MS Paint! Something with just that minimal ability to crop and add text.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[lgw]

I agree that Netflix content is crap - more and more so, sadly. Was talking about the interface, the site, design, subtitles etc... Way better than Amazon Prime.

Really? I find the opposite to be true, if we're talking about the movie playback interface. Of course, I use the web interface and don't know about the apps. You can't really even pause Netflix to admire an attractive frame without them throwing crap all over the screen, then dimming it.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[bjwest]

I'd love to use other sites (Walmart, Target)..etc., especially since sometimes they are cheaper... but they are bloated, way too slow (especially Walmart), display far too many irrelevant items / information when trying to find something...

Basically poor IT execution of their online experience.. its crappy compared to Amazon..

Fix that, and they'll get marketshare.

If Walmart were smart, they'd make a deal with the USPS for free next day delivery of items in stock locally. Hell free delivery period would be worth it. They have the shipping infrastructure to move things from their warehouses to the stores within a few days. They should also offer free pickup in-store on any item sold on their site housed in their warehouses. I regularly order 40lb bags of cat litter, but they don't offer in-store pickup at all on it. They insist on using UPS, and it's free if I order two of them at one time. No way in hell that costs them less than shipping it to the store and letting me come there and pick it up. As a prime member, I can order it from Amazon.com for the same price, sans sales tax, and still get it delivered by UPS for free.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[sixsixtysix]

My problem with brick-and-mortar search engines is they don't make it easy enough to simply find the closest store with the item I want. If I'm going to Walmart or Target websites, that usually means I want it *now*.

Right? It's the same with Best Buy. If I see something that it is in stock at a local store, I should be able to buy it and have them deliver it that day, for a small fee. Something that should be so simple loses to Amazon every single time. Target now has a similar service to Prime Now and so does Walmart, at least through Sam's Club. If these other places, like Best Buy, want to stay relevant, they need to add some value/services. It used to be taxes or time, but nowthey all tax, so you have to be as fastas your competition.

Amazon IT break thru

[spinitch]

Amazon after experiencing much pain and expense developed their own IT services which is their cash cow and competitive advantage. IT can make or break a business.

Re: I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target)

[cascadingstylesheet]

Walmart is improving. Heck, Sam's Club is worth it for some items, even with the ten percent non member penalty.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[raftpeople]

Their online experience is crappy compared to Amazon? Are you serious?????

Amazon is kicking ass but it's absolutely not due to their "clean" online experience. They have probably the single worst mass of information spewing out from the page with almost no organization, all competing for your attention like the neon lights in Time's square.

They are successful in spite of their online experience, not "due" to it.

Re:easy script

[q_e_t]

I find AmazonTM the gretest thing since sliced bread

The fact that Amazon couldn't sell you sliced bread is why it bought Wholefoods.

Re:I'd like to use other sites (Walmart, Target) b

[q_e_t]

Asda is part of Walmart.