Amazon Is America’s Number One Online Shopping Destination For The Holiday Season

Most U.S. consumers plan to use Amazo for all of their online holiday shopping this year. Based on a poll conducted by Reuters, 51 percent of Americans who will be shopping during the holidays will shop at Amazon. These people add to the previously 8 percent of Americans who usually shop online for gifts. During the survey poll, there were many figures that showed America’s preference for Amazon above all others.

During early November, 3,426 people participated in the survey, which concluded that over half would be shopping at Amazon for the holidays. The same survey showed that only 16 percent planned to shop at Walmart, 3 percent at Target, and 2 percent at Macy’s, although each retail store has an online store. Based on expert opinion, online stores that are native to web based retail, dominate online shopping and companies like Walmart, Macy’s, and Target don’t stand a chance. In fact, current sales reports show that these stores are doing even worse than expected.

Walmart recently reported a 10 percent holiday growth, which is a few digits too low. Walmart targeted a percentage of sales increase in the mid to high teens. Likewise, Target achieved a growth of a mere 20 percent. Though Target did much better than Walmart, it missed its goal by 10 percent. Amazon on the other hand has already seen a 28 percent jump in sales. Expert retail consultant, Craig Johnson, recently mentioned the strength of Amazon and it’s power over the market.

“The Big Kahuna that continues to grab market share is Amazon. Both Wal-Mart and to some extent Target have simply not kept pace enough.”

Poor sales from Target, Walmart, and others helped to strengthen Amazon in online shopping, but also allowed for some fairly new online shops to rise above. Wayfair Inc. was among the websites that had an increased amount of sales that out did the bigger companies.

With Amazon in the lead, results show the Ebay, Jet.com, and Zappos.com are all in the online shopping top five. Non holiday gift related websites like Drugstore.com and Groupon followed close behind, making it into the top ten sites for online holiday shopping. Highly advertised shopping websites that didn’t make the cut, were Zulily and Fingerhut, along with a few others. As the sales reports for some of America’s favorite retailers keep coming, the question on business minds is, why is Amazon so successful?

Some experts believe that Amazon has an advantage to stores like Target and Walmart because it is 100 percent web-based. However, what most have come up with, is that Amazon is superior because of its marketing strategy, which calls for less work than major department stores because there is no physical shopping location for Amazon. Additionally, Amazon has it’s own products and draw millions of people with it’s streaming service, Amazon Prime. It has often been compared to other services like Netflix and Hulu, and found too be ranked just as high in streaming as it is in shopping. Kelly Rice, an analyst at Neeham & Co asserts that Amazon have a pretty killer marketing strategy.

“They drive you to that site in many, many ways. It’s not about driving foot traffic to retail stores.”

So, what others tricks does Amazon have to get Americans shopping? One of them is same-day delivery, a perk that its competitors need work on. Walmart specifically, has a site-to-store option when shopping online, but it only works if the item is actually in stock at the right location.

In the festive days to come, it is expected that popular shopping websites like 6pm.com and newegg.com will increase in sales and major names like Sears and Apple will struggle to make sales in their online stores during the holidays. Amazon’s numbers are only expected to get better.

[Feature image via Matt Cardy/Stringer/Getty Images]