Amazon Maintains Holiday Dominance Despite Stepped-Up Pressure

Amazon Maintains Holiday Dominance Despite Stepped-Up Pressure

Amazon maintained its online dominance in the 2017 holiday shopping season despite increasing competition from Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy, according to Bloomberg.

Amazon captured 89 percent of all online holiday spending in the five-week period beginning on Thanksgiving, according to an analysis of credit- and debit-card transaction data by Earnest Research in New York. Wal-Mart, which purchased Jet.com in 2016 for $3 billion, remained a distant second a 4.4 percent.

The data show market share has changed little from a year ago even as more spending shifts online. That suggests brick-and-mortar stores are keeping their customers, even as more shoppers shift their spending to the stores’ websites, said Andrew Robson, president and chief revenue officer at Earnest. Traditional retailers have been trying to match Amazon’s strength by offering more products online and adding new services like letting shoppers find and purchase goods on the web and pick them up at nearby stores.

Earnest has launched a “Consumer Insights & Competitor Intelligence“ tool that measures consumer preferences across multiple brands. A recent comparison of Wal-Mart and Amazon shoppers found that Amazon’s customers prefer to buy clothing from Banana Republic, workout gear from Under Armour and fast food from Domino’s Pizza while Wal-Mart shoppers prefer H&M clothing, Foot Locker athletic gear and Taco Bell.