Amazon’s 80 Percent Market Share Has Left It No Room to Grow Further, While Competitors Surge Ahead

Jumpshot, the only company that unlocks walled garden data, released The Competitive State of eCommerce Marketplaces Data Report, highlighting that Walmart and other retailers are surging online while Amazon’s market share has plateaued. Jumpshot studied anonymous consumer actions on mobile and desktop devices within 500 eCommerce sites and marketplaces in Q2 2018, analyzing visits and transactions for different brand categories across these sites.

Major takeaways from the report include:

• Amazon has more than 80 percent market share across numerous categories. But its dominance has left no room to grow further.
• While Walmart has a relatively small market share today compared to Amazon, it is growing at 3.5x faster than Amazon
• Amazon overtook Google in product search with about 54 percent of product searches beginning on Amazon, up from 46 percent in 2015
• Almost 90 percent of all product views on Amazon result from Amazon’s product search and not merchandising, ads or product aggregators

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“Amazon’s dominance has really set it apart as the default place for product search, encroaching on Google’s territory,” said Deren Baker, CEO of Jumpshot. “They have started to leverage that strength with more sponsored placements, making billions on their product search even while their market share plateaus.”

A recent survey by Jumpshot shows that 84 percent of marketers sell across multiple marketplaces. Brands can now recognize which marketplace is the right fit for their product category and understand how their competitors are performing everywhere their customers shop.

Additional report findings:

Amazon’s dominance is being challenged

• Amazon’s growth is 1.7x slower than individual category growth YoY
  • Amazon saw an average of 20 percent growth YoY across various categories
  • Sales across marketplaces for these same categories grew by 32 percent on average
  • Amazon lost over 10 percent of market share across many categories
• Walmart is growing more than 2x faster than individual categories across the board, except in Women’s Clothing
  • Walmart is growing 70 percent YoY across these categories
  • The average YoY growth across several categories is 32 percent
• Walmart is growing 3.5x faster YoY than Amazon
  • Walmart is growing 70 percent YoY across these categories
  • The average growth across individual categories is 32 percent

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Top performers vary across categories

• Home Improvement Category: Walmart and Home Depot are growing up to 16 percent in market share, while Amazon is declining
• Furniture Category: Wayfair has a good market hold and continues to grow at 21 percent, outshone in YoY growth by Ikea at 57 percent
• Food Category: Specialized food delivery brands are losing share while big box retailers like Walmart and Kroger grow 52 percent and 20 percent YoY, respectively
• Beauty Category: Specialist retailer Sephora declines 53 percent online, superstores Walmart and Target steal market share
• Women’s Clothing Category: All top marketplaces are growing share except Amazon; H&M grew the highest at 77 percent YoY

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Amazon is increasing focus on search and sponsored placements

• Amazon overtook Google in product search
  • About 54 percent of product searches begin on Amazon, up from 46 percent in 2015
  • Almost 90 percent of all product views on Amazon result from Amazon’s product search and not merchandising, ads or product aggregators
• Amazon search result placement is vital for product views
  • The 4th ranked product spot generates more views (7 percent of all clicks) than the 2nd and 3rd ranked spots (5.7 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively)
  • More than 2/3 of all product clicks come from the first page of Amazon results, and 1/3 from the first two rows alone
• Time to purchase from Amazon search is longer than from Google search
  • 35 percent of Google searches, and less than 20 percent of Amazon searches led to a transaction within 5 days
  • Across all categories, Amazon search averages 25.9 days from search to purchase. Google search averages just 19.6 days
• Amazon is increasing focus on sponsored ads
  • Sponsored listings only make up about 6 percent of all product views from Amazon’s search results page
  • Clicks from sponsored placements on Amazon have increased 17 percent since the beginning of 2018

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