When you’re on top, there’s nowhere to go but down. And while Amazon.com Inc. dominates e-commerce, its market share is slipping in several categories and its growth is slowing in others, according to a new report.
When it comes to e-commerce market share, Amazon, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 1000, accounts for more than 80% of online transactions across numerous categories, according to marketing analytics firm Jumpshot. For example, Amazon accounts for 89.9% of electronics transactions, 83.8% of home improvement transactions and 88.8% of household essentials purchases. Jumpshot studied anonymous consumer actions on U.S. mobile and desktop devices across 500 e-commerce sites and online marketplaces in the second quarter for its study. It analyzed visits and transactions for different brand categories across each of these sites for its findings.
However, Amazon’s transaction growth is tapering, the report finds, as its dominance has left no room for further growth. For example, Amazon experienced 21% transaction growth year over year in the second quarter across nine categories including: furniture, electronics, home improvement, food and grocery, sports and outdoor gear, beauty, health, household essentials and women’s clothing. However, transaction growth for all the websites Jumpshot analyzed across these same categories increased 33.2% on average. Additionally, Amazon lost more than 10% market share in terms of transactions year over year in many categories, Jumpshot finds.
Walmart Inc. (No. 3) is growing especially quickly, the report finds. Walmart is growing transactions by an average of 70% across the same nine categories where Amazon is achieving 21% growth, Jumpshot finds.
The report also finds:
Amazon accounts for more than 80% of transactions in the following categories:
- Electronics: 89.9%
- Home Improvement: 83.8%
- Food: 81.8%
- Sports, Fitness & Outdoors: 89.6%
- Health (Medicines): 92.0%
- Household Essentials: 88.8%
However, looking at share of transactions across specific categories, Amazon’s growth is slowing and in some categories declining. For example, in home improvement, Amazon has 83.8% of the transactions, but its share of transactions declined by 3% year over year in second quarter.
Meanwhile, Walmart has 4.3% transactions for the home improvement category and its share of transactions is growing 16.2% While Home Depot (No. 7) and Lowe’s (No. 21) have 5.5% and 3.3% of transactions in the category respectively, they are growing their share of transactions by 12.2% and 13.8%, respectively.
Other findings by category include:
Furniture:
- Amazon has a 47% transaction share and is losing its share to other retailers. Its share of transactions declined 10.8% for the category in the quarter.
- Wayfair’s (No. 13) transaction share grew 21.6% to account for 13.5% of online furniture transactions.
- Ikea (No. 75) grew its share of transactions by 57.4% to account for 8.5% of transactions.
Food:
- Walmart and Kroger (No. 86) grew their share of transactions by 52.3% and 20.0%, respectively, to account for 6.7% and 1.8% of transactions, respectively.
- Amazon is losing its share, with transactions falling 8%.
- Specialized food delivery brands are also losing transaction share. FreshDirect’s share of transactions fell 33.3% to 0.6% and Peapod’s fell 30.0% to 0.7%. Peapod is part of Ahold Delhaize, No. 62.
Beauty:
- Amazon is the market leader in beauty with 72.2% of transactions but lost 9.5% market share year over year.
- Superstores Walmart (63.2% growth in share of transactions) and Target (100% growth) steal market share from Amazon and Sephora. Target is No. 17 and Sephora is part of LVMH, No. 131.
- Sephora’s online market share of transactions declined 53.8%.
Women’s Clothing
- H&M, No. 547, grew its share of transactions by 77%.
- Amazon has less than 50% transaction share (42%) in women’s clothing.
- Amazon’s market share of transactions declined by 30% in the quarter.
The report also finds that 54% of product searches began on Amazon in the quarter. Additionally, nearly 90% of all product views on Amazon stem from Amazon’s product search results and not merchandising, ads or product aggregators, the report notes. Sponsored listings account for about 6% of all product views from Amazon’s search results page. However, clicks from sponsored placements on Amazon have increased 17% since the beginning of 2018.
“Amazon’s dominance has really set it apart as the default place for product search, encroaching on Google’s territory,” says Deren Baker, CEO of Jumpshot. “They have started to leverage that strength with more sponsored placements, making billions on their product search.”
35% of Google searches and fewer than 19% of Amazon searches led to a transaction within five days. Across all categories, Amazon search averages 25.9 days from search to purchase. Google search averages 19.6 days.
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