BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A new Profitero study reveals that Amazon is still the overall industry price leader, averaging 13% less expensive than other major online retailers in the U.S.
Profitero’s latest study in its Price Wars series compared prices on 100,000 products across 16 retailers from April – June 2018. Overall, Amazon had the lowest prices on the broadest selection of popular items, winning 11 out of 15 categories studied. Walmart.com had the most competitive prices to Amazon’s, with prices averaging 2.3% higher. Jet had prices 4.2% higher than Amazon, while Target averaged 11.9% higher. There were a few exceptions where Amazon wasn’t the lowest priced in market. For instance, Chewy.com was 2.3% cheaper in pet supplies and Jet.com had lower prices than Amazon in beauty (.4%) and music & CDs (2.6%).
Other highlights from the study include:
- Amazon continues to dominate specialty retailers: Amazon’s price advantage was most notable versus specialty stores. On average, Amazon was 13.3% cheaper on appliances and 15.2% cheaper on electronics versus Best Buy; 18.4% cheaper on sporting goods versus Dick’s Sporting Goods; and 24.9% cheaper on furniture compared to Wayfair. This dramatic price gap could have a major impact on these retailers’ holiday shopping sales if trends continue into November and December.
- Walmart is making furniture and baby a key focus: As already noted, Walmart.com had the most competitive prices to Amazon’s among any other retailer. Walmart appears to be making the largest strides to keep up with Amazon in the home furniture and baby categories, where they were found to be priced -0.7% and -0.3% lower, respectively.
- Grocery competition intensifies: In February 2018, Profitero noted that Walmart, Jet and Target were locked into fierce price competition with Amazon within online grocery. Since then, Jet.com has separated from the pack, lowering grocery prices by 5%.
Keith Anderson, Profitero’s SVP of Product Strategy and Insights and author of the study said: “Based on our latest data, it’s clear that Amazon is the best-priced retailer across the broadest selection of products. That said, for those willing to spend the time, deals can still be found in price-competitive categories like baby, pet, and beauty products.”
For the full report, Price Wars: A Study of Online Competitiveness (April - June 2018), go here.
Methodology Summary
Each day, Profitero monitors prices and
other data on more than 450 million product pages at more than 8,000+
online retailers. For this study, Profitero analyzed daily prices
collected from April 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018 across 16 leading online
retailers. Categories analyzed included Appliances, Baby, Beauty,
Electronics, Grocery, Home Furniture, Household Supplies, Music & CDs,
Office Supplies, Pet Supplies, Sports & Outdoors, Tool & Home
Improvement, Toys & Games, and Video Games. The study only compares
prices collected on the same day, with both retailers in-stock. Amazon
prices reflect 1P only on Amazon.com, exclusive of Fresh and Prime Now.
The other retailer online prices studied could reflect promoted prices,
but exclude coupons, other discounts that require additional shopper
action, or special prices available through retailer-specific programs
like Target REDcard or Jet Smart Cart.
About Profitero
Profitero is the eCommerce Performance
analytics platform of choice for leading brands around the world. With
Profitero, brands can measure their digital shelf performance across
8,000+ retailer sites and mobile apps in 50 countries, gaining
actionable insights to improve product content, search placement,
ratings & reviews, availability, assortment and pricing. Profitero also
allows brands to measure their Amazon sales & share performance, and is
the only solution that can correlate Amazon sales & share performance
with changes across the digital shelf. Many of the world’s leading brand
manufacturers depend on Profitero’s granular and highly-accurate data to
measure and improve their eCommerce performance. These include
Beiersdorf, iRobot, Edgewell, General Mills, Heineken, Kids II,
MillerCoors and L’Oreal.