Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by johnfactorial 2454 days ago
> They control close to 50% of e-commerce which itself represents less than 12% of total retail sales.

Both of these numbers are surprising to me, can you source them? Particularly the first one, which I assume is a global measure, and I'd be interested to know what % of North American e-commerce Amazon controls. I wager I could walk outside my home and ask 100 people on the sidewalk to name one e-commerce site and far more than 50% would name Amazon first.

5 comments

> I wager I could walk outside my home and ask 100 people on the sidewalk to name one e-commerce site and far more than 50% would name Amazon first.

I don't know how many people would consider the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, and Kohl's "e-commerce sites" even though they have probably ordered stuff through their websites.

I'm not the original commenter, but here's two sources [1] [2] for the 50% number, with [1] saying this represents 5% of US retail sales. It's 50% of US e-commerce.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/13/amazons-share-of-the-us-e-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/12/amazon-to-take-almost-50-per...

Thanks very much. Some great other replies to my question in this thread as well.
In North America, Walmart seems to be a significant competition amongst others.

Clothing is also a big part of e-commerce, and Amazon doesn't have a good hold on that.

I would struggle to name a single online general retailer that isn't Amazon.

Unless you count, like, Walmart. Basically everyone else has some kind of niche. Amazon sells everything.

Why wouldn't you count Walmart or Target? For household consumables I bounce between Amazon and Target's subscribe and save offerings depending on whichever is cheaper.
Jet still exists (a Walmart acquisition), but I don't hear much about them and have a feeling they're not doing so great.
Naming something popular != market share.