Amazon has spent the better part of a quarter century forcing retailers of all stripes to innovate, speed up and compete. The company premised its great disruption on its laser focus on the customer — easing the process of shopping and paying, winnowing delivery times to a couple days or less, and slashing prices.
But the e-commerce giant’s effect on the sector appears to be waning to some extent. Rivals like Walmart and Target have done a lot of catching up, boosting their e-commerce and leveraging their many stores. Independent retailers, including the bookstores that first encountered Amazon as a new competitor, have survived. While Amazon still dominates online sales in the U.S., with some 40% share according to eMarketer, brick-and-mortar stores still drive 85% of all retail sales, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. E-commerce also remains an expensive way to sell products, including at Amazon, which warned in November that profits could vanish in the holiday quarter.
In fact, after surging during the height of the pandemic, Amazon’s retail sales floundered all year, and it appears to be scrutinizing its operations. In 2022, under new CEO Andy Jassy, the company shuttered most of its non-grocery physical stores. The company also canceled or postponed dozens of warehouses planned in an expensive expansion of its fulfillment capacity. More recently, Jassy is overseeing massive layoffs and hiring freezes, much of them in retail. He is said to be reviewing underperforming business ventures.
A new article from Retail Drive takes a deep look at how Amazon can continue to keep up with evolving ecommerce customer needs. Click here to read the full article.
Source: Retail Drive
