A new study from researchers at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., finds that people living in communities located next to large warehouses are exposed to 20% more of a traffic-related air pollutant that can lead to asthma and other life-threatening health conditions.

“Increased truck traffic to and from these recently built large warehouses means people living downwind are inhaling an increased amount of harmful nitrogen dioxide pollution,” says Gaige Kerr, an assistant research professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health. “Communities of color are disproportionately affected because they often live in close proximity to warehouses, especially dense clusters of warehouses.”

Ecommerce warehouses worsen air quality

Researchers measured nitrogen dioxide levels by using a satellite instrument from the European Space Agency to zero in from space on the nearly 150,000 large warehouses located across the U.S.

Trucks and other vehicles traveling to and from these large warehouses spew out nitrogen dioxide, particulates, and other harmful pollutants, the study says.

The researchers also looked at traffic information from the Federal Highway Administration and demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

A major cause of added pollution has been the boom in warehouse construction. That boom was spurred by record levels of ecommerce buying from consumers and businesses. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic fueled the explosion of the ecommerce industry and warehouses that receive and sort consumer goods. As a result, the transportation infrastructure needed to ship goods to warehouses and then on to consumers is enormous, according to the researchers. Amazon, specifically, an industry leader in ecommerce, operated 175,000 delivery vans and more than 37,000 semi-trailers in 2021.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales. It’s also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV). Digital Commerce 360 projects Amazon’s total web sales in 2024 will reach $469.01 billion.

According to the study, although warehouses are located all over the US, 20% are concentrated in just 10 counties:

• Maricopa, Arizona
• Alameda, California
• Los Angeles, California
• Orange, California
• San Bernardino, California
• Miami-Dade, Florida
• Cook, Illinois
• Cuyahoga, Ohio
• Dallas, Texas
• Harris, Texas

Key findings from the study

• Although the average spike of nitrogen dioxide associated with warehouses was 20%, nitrogen dioxide levels near warehouses were even larger when there was greater heavy-duty vehicle activity near these facilities.
• Warehouses with more loading docks and parking spaces attract the most traffic. They are also associated with the highest nitrogen dioxide levels.
• Communities with large racial and ethnic minority populations are often located near warehouses. Thus, they inhale more nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants. The proportion of Hispanic and Asian people living close to the largest clusters of warehouses is about 250% higher than the average nationwide.

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Independent sellers, specifically, sold more than 200 million items over the course of the 48-hour Prime Day event. Amazon said most of them are small and medium-sized businesses.

Additionally, Amazon said its new AI-powered conversational assistant — which it calls Rufus — helped millions of customers shop during the event.

“Millions more Prime members shopped the two-day shopping event compared to Prime Day 2023,” Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales. It’s also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces by third-party gross merchandise value (GMV). Digital Commerce 360 projects Amazon’s total web sales in 2024 will reach $469.01 billion.

How much did Amazon make in sales during Prime Day 2024?

Although Amazon didn’t reveal exactly how much it made in Prime Day 2024 sales, third-party data provides insights into how the event went.

The average order value (AOV) during Prime Day 2024 was $57.97, according to data from Numerator. Numerator is a data and technology company that provides market research. Its data is based on a collection of 93,513 unique orders during Amazon’s 48-hour event, from 35,588 households.

More than half (60%) of households that shopped Amazon during the Prime Day 2024 sales event placed two or more orders. This brought the average household spend to about $152, Numerator said. 40% of households made just one order, whereas 24% made two orders.

Additionally, 23% of households for which Numerator has data spent more than $200. 22% of households spent more than $100 but no more than $200. Similarly, 21% of households spent more than $50 but no more than $100.

The average price per item was $28.06, Numerator found. Based on the number of units purchased, the top-selling items were the Amazon Fire TV Stick, premier protein shakes, Liquid I.V. packets, Glad trash bags and COSRX snail mucin serum.

88% of shoppers were Prime members, according to Numerator, and 85% have been Prime members for more than a year. 98% knew it was Prime Day before shopping, and just over half (53%) said Prime Day was their main reason for shopping. Moreover, 54% compared prices from other retailers.

Whereas 41% of consumers Numerator surveyed said they didn’t shop other sales, more than a third shopped other Mass Merchants‘ summer sales promotions. 35% said they shopped Walmart Deals, which ran July 8 to 11. Similarly, 34% shopped Target Circle Week. Just 11% said they shopped from Consumer Electronics retailer Best Buy’s Black Friday in July promotion.

Impact of Amazon Prime Day 2024 on US online retail sales

On the second day of the Amazon Prime Day 2024 event, July 17, consumers spent $7 billion online — and that’s outside of Amazon itself — according to data from Adobe Analytics.

Adobe’s analysis is based on 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories and covers more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.

That $7 billion is shy of the first 24 hours’ $7.2 billion, which marked a new record, yet it still represents 10.4% year-over-year growth.

However, it brings the total of U.S. online retail sales — excluding Amazon — to $14.2 billion during the full Amazon Prime Day 2024 sales event, according to Adobe. That’s both an 11% year-over-year increase and a new record for online sales during the Prime Day event.

Sales growth by category

Specific categories drove the sales, Adobe data shows. Electronics sales as a whole increased 61% over the two-day event compared to average daily sales in June 2024, Adobe said. Across specific products, tablets had the largest sales growth at 117% over the two-day event, followed by:

• Televisions (up 111%)
• Headphones and Bluetooth speakers (105%)
• Fitness trackers (88%)
• Computers (80%)
• Smartphones (71%)
• Cameras (60%)

Among home, furniture and appliances sales, small kitchen appliances saw the largest growth over the two-day sales period at 76%. Kitchenware and cookware sales grew 25% and mattresses 21%. Meanwhile, Home office furniture sales grew 14% and bedroom furniture 11%.

Within the apparel category, sales of suits grew the most, at 36% across both days. Outerwear (19%), footwear (17%) and accessories (17%) accounted for the next-most sales growth.

“The electronics, apparel, and furniture categories make up nearly half of e-commerce spend but has seen low single digit growth in the first half of 2024,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “It’s clear now that the Prime Day event has been a catalyst across these major categories, with discounts deep enough for consumers to hit the buy button and upgrade items in their homes.”

Trending spending habits

Almost half of that total came from mobile devices. Mobile commerce drove close to half (49.2%) of online purchases on the second of Amazon’s two-day event. For both days combined, consumers spent $7 billion from their mobile devices. That’s 18.6% year-over-year growth.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) accounted for 7.6% of online orders during the Amazon Prime Day 2024 sales event. BNPL drove $1.08 billion in online spending during Amazon’s Prime Day 2024 sales event. That’s 16.4% year-over-year growth.

Retailers have leaned into discounts to drive growth since the 2023 holiday shopping season, Adobe said. Amazon Prime Day’s sales event drew discounts from other retailers, according to Adobe Analytics, including:

• Electronics peaking at 23% off listed price (vs. 14% in 2023)
• Apparel discounts at 20% (vs. 12% in 2023)
• Home/furniture at 16% (vs. 9%)
• Televisions at 16% (vs. 5%)
• Toys at 15% (vs. 12%)
• Appliances at 14% (vs. 7%)
• Sporting goods at 11% (vs. 6%)
• Computers at 11% (vs. 8%)

Consumers selected curbside pickup for nearly a fifth of U.S. online orders (18.9%) during the two-day sales event (among retailers offering the service). That’s down slight from 20.2% in 2023.

Prime Day’s effect on online retail

Globally, sales growth for retailers other than Amazon was flat year over year during the Prime Day 2024 event, according to ecommerce platform provider Salesforce.

That wasn’t the case in North America, though. As a whole, North American online sales grew 3% year over year during the sales event. The United States led that total growth for the continent, accounting for most of the sales during the period. However, Canada’s online retail sales grew at a faster rate: 8% year over year.

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. And in 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.

Consumers locked in on deals as they become increasingly focused on value, said Rob Garf, vice president and general manager of retail and consumer goods at Salesforce, in a statement. Makeup, skin care, and apparel were the big winners heading into the back-to-school season, he added.

“Amazon’s annual Prime Day gives us a glimpse into what we can expect this holiday season,” Garf said. “And retailers must be smiling. Online traffic and demand were up. And much of the online growth was based on people buying more, not just higher prices.”

In contrast, TikTok’s “Deal for You Days” did not drive the same results as Amazon this year, Salesforce said. Discounts timed to coincide with TikTok’s sales event averaged 18% off product prices. That compares to 22% discounts, on average, during this year’s Prime Day event, according to Salesforce data.

Salesforce also broke out which categories had the largest sales growth and discounts during the full span of the 2024 Prime Day event.

Top-performing verticals by sales growth

1. Health & Beauty (16% increase). Makeup sales, specifically, grew 30%. Skin care sales grew 14%.
2. Active Footwear (12%)
3. General Footwear (12%)

Highest discounts globally by category

1. General Apparel  (average discount of 28%)
2. Beauty & Makeup (26%; was 21% in 2023)
3. Beauty & Skincare (22%)
4. Home & Furniture (22%)

Global discounts grew 8% year over year during the full 48 hours of the Prime Day 2024 sales event, Salesforce said. The average discount rate across categories was 20%.

Highest discounts by category in the US

1. General Apparel (average discount of 33%)
2. Home & Furniture (21%)
3. Health & Beauty (21%)

Discounts from U.S. online retailers grew 10% year over year during the same period, according to Salesforce. The average discount rate across categories was 22%. For online retailers in Canada, those figures are 11% and 27%, respectively.

“For the first time in a long time, we’re seeing order volumes turn positive and discounting is high,” said Caila Schwartz, director of consumer insights at Salesforce, in a statement. “The lesson is a simple one — if retailers deliver on discounting and providing true value, they will release that pressure valve of built-up demand and see incredible success. If they don’t, retailers may risk losing out as shoppers will go elsewhere.”

Here’s last year’s article summarizing Amazon Prime Day sales results.

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In other words, if Amazon is holding a sales event, so are other online retailers. Furthermore, if Amazon is holding a sales event, consumers are shopping — whether on Amazon or elsewhere — to capitalize on promotions.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales. It’s also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces. Digital Commerce 360 projects Amazon’s total web sales in 2024 will reach $469.01 billion.

As one of the largest online merchants on the planet, its decisions — such as when to hold promotions — affect the entire ecommerce industry.

How much did consumers spend on the first of Amazon’s Prime Days in 2024?

U.S. consumers spent $7.2 billion on July 16, the first of Amazon’s 48-hour Prime Day 2024 sales event, according to Adobe Analytics. But that’s not just sales on Amazon.com. Adobe’s analysis is based on 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories and covers more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.

That $7.2 billion represents 11.7% year-over-year growth and marks the single-largest ecommerce spending day of 2024 yet, according to Adobe data. It also substantiates the likening of Prime Day to “Black Friday in July,” as some retailers offered promotions using the marketing term that overlap with — or directly compete against — Amazon’s sales event.

200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more.

Trending spending habits

Moreover, the first 24 hours of Amazon’s Prime Day 2024 event also marked the biggest mobile shopping day of the year so far, Adobe said. The Amazon Prime Day effect contributed to $3.5 billion in mobile spending on July 16, which is 49.3% of sales, nearly equal to desktop shopping.

Specific categories drove the sales, Adobe data shows. Electronics sales as a whole increased 33% compared to average daily sales in June 2024, Adobe said. Across specific products, headphones and Bluetooth speakers saw the largest sales growth at 164%, followed by:

• Televisions (up 83%)
• Fitness trackers (81%)
• Tablets (71%)
• E-readers (65%)
• Computers (64%)

Consumers used curbside pickup for 18% of online orders from online retailers that offer the service. That represents a decrease from 20% for the same period last year, Adobe said.

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) accounted for 7.5% of online orders in the first 24 hours of the Prime Day 2024 event. That represents $540 in revenue, which is a 17.1% year-over-year increase, according to Adobe.

“Steep discounting has been the story of e-commerce so far this year, as consumers look to get the most value out of their dollar,” said Vivek Pandya, lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, in a statement. “It is driving up demand for major categories like electronics and apparel, which have seen more modest growth in recent months, while also capturing back-to-school shoppers at just the right moment.”

What is the Amazon Prime Day effect?

Prime Day creates a small “halo effect” for North American retailers, as Salesforce puts it. Online sales growth in North America hit 3% year over year in the first 24 hours of Prime Day, according to the platform provider, based on the activity of 1.5 billion shoppers across Salesforce Commerce Cloud and other Salesforce products. Its results encompass retailers and brands outside of Amazon, it said. Web traffic to North American online retailers grew 4% year over year.

In North America, 76 of the top 2000 online retailers use Salesforce as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. And in 2023, those 76 online retailers combined for more than $136.077 billion in web sales.

In the U.S., specifically, online sales grew 3% year over year during the first day of the event. For Canada, that was 4% growth over the same period. Meanwhile, web traffic to online retailers grew 4% in the U.S. and 6% in Canada.

Globally, year-over-year sales during the first 24 hours of the Prime Day event were flat for retailers other than Amazon, Salesforce said. However, global web traffic to Salesforce-powered online retailers grew 2% year over year for the first 24 hours.

Salesforce also broke out which categories had the largest sales growth and discounts during the first 24 hours of the 2024 Prime Day event.

Top-performing verticals by sales growth

1. Health & Beauty (23% increase)
2. Active Footwear (10%)
3. General Handbags (12%)

Highest discounts globally by category

1. General Apparel  (average discount of 28%)
2. Beauty & Makeup (26%)
3. Home & Furniture (24%)

Global discounts grew 10% year over year during the first 24 hours of the Prime Day event, Salesforce said. The average discount rate across categories was 20%.

Highest discounts by category in the US

1. General Apparel (average discount of 33%)
2. Home Goods, which includes dining, furniture and art (23%)
3. Health & Beauty (20%)

Discounts from U.S. online retailers grew 13% year over year during the same period, according to Salesforce. The average discount rate across categories was 22%. For online retailers in Canada, those figures are 8% and 27%, respectively.

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Amazon, which is the top retailer in the Top 1000, started its member-only summer shopping holiday back in 2015, and many retailers over the years have joined the ecommerce bonanza by offering their own sales — with many returning again this year. However, two of Amazon’s largest competitors, Walmart Inc. (No. 2) and Target Corp. (No. 5), both held more subdued sales this year.

The Top 1000 ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual web sales.

Prime Day competition from Walmart and Target

Last year, Walmart and Target held big, branded sales during the Prime Day sales week, offering members of its loyalty programs discounts on a wide variety of items.

This year, Walmart held a Walmart+ Week in mid-June, and Target’s Circle Week sale took place the week before Prime Day. Both retailers still offered deals on their homepages on Tuesday, the first of the Prime Day sales event, but neither branded their promotions in ways that overtly compete with Amazon.

Still, 77% of the retailers in the Digital Commerce 360 panel ran promotions on Tuesday. That’s up from 69% in early June and even above the 75% running on last year’s first day of the Prime Day sales event — also a Tuesday. However, retailers offered smaller homepage discounts, down to a minimum of 6% compared to a 10% minimum discount during the control period. The median smallest discount on the homepage also shrank, down to 20% from 25% during the control.

Of those running promotions, more offered percentage-off discounts during the first day of the Prime Day sales event compared to the control period — 85.5% of retailers offering promotions discounted by percentages compared to 72.7% during the control. Free shipping, a hallmark of Amazon’s Prime membership, was also touted a lot on Prime Day, with 15.8% of retailers offering promotions mentioning it as part of a sale compared to just 4.5% the month before.

Prime time promotions

Of retailers running promotions in Digital Commerce 360’s panel, 22.1% offered large site-wide promotions to compete with Amazon. Last year, 29.3% of the same panel offered competing promotions. For example, Target was running a simple “2-day deals” promotion, a slight nod to Amazon’s big sale, but with much less fanfare. Similarly, Walmart pushed its membership program, but deals on its front page were much the same as they were during the control period.

Still, other retailers did aim to take on Amazon. The Gap Inc. (No. 20) returned to its Gap Day promotion, which it didn’t run during last year’s Prime Day event, with a blanket 50% off promotion. Designer Brands (No. 72) used its DSW.com to poke fun at Amazon, noting that it was a “Prime time to become a VIP member” to get a 20% discount.

During the first day of the Prime Day event, the Prime-adjacent sales were the most popular framing, but many more retailers were pushing Father’s Day sales during the control period. This holds steady from last year, when many more retailers published 4th of July deals than competed with Prime Day.

Last year’s control period was after Father’s Day and before the 4th. This year’s was before both.

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If the two-day Amazon Prime sale event July 16 and 17 does drive $14 billion in ecommerce activity, that would represent a 10.5% increase year over year. It would also be the highest-ever result recorded during Amazon’s best-known promotion.

Adobe’s analysis is based on 100 million stock keeping units (SKUs) across 18 product categories. 200 online retailers in the Top 1000 use Adobe Analytics for their web analytics, and 97 use it for site design and development. Top 1000 online retailers also use it for content delivery and management, as an ecommerce platform, a marketing platform, for personalization and more. The Top 1000 is Digital Commerce 360’s database of North America’s largest online retailers based on web sales.

Why Prime Day could see ecommerce sales reach $14 billion

“Adobe expects day 1 of the Prime Day event (July 16) to drive $7.1 billion online, up an impressive 11.3 percent year-over-year (YoY),” Vivek Pandya, the director at Adobe Digital Insights, wrote in a July 15 blog post. “Day 2 (July 17) is expected to drive $6.9 billion online, up 9.2 percent YoY.”

In addition, Pandya said Adobe anticipates July 16 will “be the biggest mobile shopping day of the year so far, driving $3.4 billion in online spend, and representing a 48.4 percent share compared to desktop shopping.”

Why the dramatic increase from 2023? Among the factors cited are deeper discounts ranging from 9% to 22% off listed prices, according to Pandya. He also credited back-to-school shopping, where Adobe already saw an 80% increase in spending during the first week of July. With Prime Day occurring closer to the beginning of the new school year after landing on July 11 and 12 in 2023, proximity could fuel more buying activity, Adobe predicts.

Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) promotions may fuel activity as well.

“Adobe expects a substantial uptick in BNPL usage during the Prime Day event, driving between $1.09 and $1.11 billion in online spend across both days, and representing 18.1 percent and 19.6 percent growth YoY, respectively,” Pandya wrote.

How important is Prime Day for Amazon?

Now in its 10th year, Amazon uses Prime Day to drive paid memberships to its Amazon Prime membership program, in addition to sales of its own products and those of third-party sellers. In 2024, the company announced that Prime members would have “exclusive access to millions” of deals. Some of those deals would be circulated through invitations that only Prime members can request. Examples include 40% discounts for Sony wireless headphones and as much as 30% off Peloton products.

Amazon web sales by year

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000. It’s also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces. Digital Commerce 360 projects Amazon’s total web sales in 2024 will reach $469.01 billion.

Alongside other promotions this year, Amazon is showcasing back-to-school and college shopping deals. The online retailer is offering young adults and college students special “Prime Student” accounts with six-month trials. Those offers will be accompanied by discounted Amazon Basics products for school-related needs.

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Funko handles fulfillment for many orders from funko.com through its warehouse in Phoenix, Arizona, Smiley told Digital Commerce 360 at the Salesforce Connections 2024 conference in Chicago. But when consumers buy a “Pop! Yourself” figure — a customizable figure made to look like an individual — fulfillment goes through a third-party logistics (3PL) provider’s warehouse in Mexico. Additionally, Funko orders made via Amazon.com go through Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).

And it doesn’t stop there. Funko is exploring more fulfillment options to prepare for holiday sales.

Funko prepares for holiday sales with fulfillment expansion

The retailer plans “to continue to lean into the Pop! Yourself” figures because they’re the retailer’s most giftable offering, Smiley told Digital Commerce 360.

“When you want to gift something to somebody, you want it to be personalized,” Smiley said.

Funko promotes its Pop! Yourself figures, which go through a third-party logistics provider for fulfillment, ahead of the holiday season.

And at the moment, Funko only ships with one carrier, UPS. But it plans to expand to ship with multiple carriers for the 2024 holiday shopping season, Smiley told Digital Commerce 360.

“That’s going to enable us to bump up our last-ship date,” he said. “Our cutoff date will be closer to the holidays, and we’ll offer expedited and things like that.”

Smiley declined to specify which additional carriers Funko will use for holiday fulfillment, but he said they are some of the largest carriers in the nation.

Funko saw “massive growth” in its direct-to-consumer sales last holiday season, Smiley stated. And he expects more growth this year. He estimates a quarter of Funko sales today are DTC.

“We were not necessarily a Q4 brand like many other retailers were because of our conventions,” Smiley explained. “Summer was always our biggest season. The holidays started to — maybe by and large because of Pop! Yourself — become a competitive time of the year compared to the conventions as well.”

Why does Funko use different fulfillment warehouses?

In the case of its Pop! Yourself figures, the main reason Funko doesn’t ship them from its Arizona factory is because the 3PL provider also handles the building component. Funko has to build each customized figure to order. On the other hand, Funko figures shipped out of the retailer’s warehouse in Arizona come assembled.

Smiley said the Funko’s Arizona warehouse is “just not set up” to handle the building in addition to the fulfillment.

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Now that the dust has settled, we can say that neither proved to be true.

As part of the recently released Top 1000/Top 500 Report from Digital Commerce 360, we examined the ecommerce growth from 2019 through 2023 for the 1,000 largest North America-based retailers and consumer brand manufacturers by global online sales. And there were quite a few surprises.

How did the pandemic affect sales growth for the Top 1000 online retailers?

It is true that the Top 1000’s online sales grew rapidly during the pandemic. In fact, their global ecommerce revenue exceeded $1 trillion in 2023 for the first time, growing 6.9% over 2022.

And for 2019-2023, online sales for the Top 1000 increased at a robust compound annual growth rate of 17.2%, nearly doubling during that period. But online retailing was growing at an even faster rate before COVID hit. The Top 1000 posted an 18.6% compound annual growth rate from 2016-2019, well above the pandemic-era CAGR.

How fast did Amazon grow during the pandemic?

And while Amazon (No. 1 in the Top 1000) did fine during the pandemic, posting a 17.8% CAGR during the five-year period, store-based retailers collectively did even better, growing at a 19.2% annual rate.

As a result, their share of Top 1000 sales increased to 34.0% in 2023 from 31.8%. Amazon’s share also grew, but more modestly, to 38.7% in 2023 from 38.0% in 2019.

Amazon accounted for 7.4% of global online retail sales in 2023. But that global number includes the $2.17 trillion in e-retail sales in China, where Amazon effectively no longer competes. Taking out China, Amazon accounts for 12.2% of online retail sales in the rest of the world. That more accurately reflects its dominance everywhere but China.

2024 Top 1000 Report

Analysis of North America’s leading 1,000 online retailers. Includes over 175 charts, rankings by annual web sales, benchmarking data, and growth analyses by category and merchant type.

View Details

Growth in online grocery sales

A big reason for the online growth of physical store retailers is the surge in online grocery shopping during the pandemic.

The Food/Beverage category posted the highest compound annual growth rate from 2019-2023 at 26.0%. That mainly benefited traditional supermarkets like Kroger (No. 6 in the Top 1000), which increased its online share of total sales to 10.5% in 2023 from 5.3% in 2019, and Walmart (No.2), which sells the most groceries of any U.S. retailer and increased its ecommerce penetration to 15.4% in 2023 from 7.6% in 2019.

Here are some of the other data highlights from the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000/Top 500 report:

• Conversion rate for Top 1000 retailers ticked down to just over 2.6% in 2023 from nearly 2.8% in 2022. But that still was ahead of the 2.2% rate in 2019.
• Shoppers 55 and older accounted for only 18.4% of visits to Top 1000 sites in 2023, down from 21.8% in 2022. That suggests that older consumers were especially likely to return to shopping in physical stores as the pandemic eased in 2023.
• Larger retail chains are more likely than smaller ones to offer a mobile app, and store operators with apps are more likely to offer omnichannel services: 33.0% of store-based retailers with a mobile app offered curbside pickup in 2023 versus 13.5% of those without an app, and 87.0% offered in-store pickup of online orders compared to 50.4% of those without an app.
• The Top 1000 accounted for 19.2% of global retail ecommerce sales in 2023, unchanged from a year earlier. Amazon alone accounted for 7.4% of global e-retail in 2023, up from 7.2% in 2022.

What else is in this year’s Top 1000 report?

The Top 1000/Top 500 Report includes all of the following:

• Top 1000 growth by merchant type and merchandise category, comparing 2023 to 2022 and analyzing the five-year period from 2019 to 2023.
• Website traffic trends, broken down by merchant type, merchandise category, gender and age.
• Average order value and conversion rate by merchant type and merchandise category.
• An analysis of winners and losers within the 2024 rankings of the Top 500, North America’s leading retailers by global online sales.
• Mobile traffic and sales for Top 1000 ecommerce sites.
• International shipping methods, payment types and shopping features offered by Top 1000 sites.
• Which online marketplaces Top 1000 retailers sell on, broken out by merchant type and merchandise category.
• An analysis of omnichannel retail services offered, including in-store pickup of online orders, curbside pickup and showing store inventory on retail chain websites.
• How digitally native brands are faring online.

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Now, the retailer has shared the event’s dates. The Amazon Prime Day sales event will be July 16 through July 17, starting at 12:01 a.m. Pacific time, the retailer announced.

In 2023, Amazon customers saved nearly $24 billion via deals and coupons, according to Jamil Ghani, vice president of Amazon Prime. He said Prime members accounted for the “vast majority of those savings.” More than $2.5 billion of those savings were during Prime Day 2023, Ghani said.

Amazon is No. 1 in the Top 1000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in the Global Online Marketplaces database, which ranks the 100 largest global marketplaces.

The most recent Amazon sales event

Most recently, the online retail giant held its inaugural Big Spring Sale from March 20 through 25, its first Prime Day-equivalent sales event of 2024.

The Amazon Big Spring Sale event was open to all customers, and Prime members received access to exclusive deals, Amazon said. Additionally, Amazon said it would release new deals each day of the event. In the U.S., shoppers found deals up to 50% off on beauty products as well as sports and outdoors equipment, according to Amazon. They also saw 40% off some home products, spring apparel and electronics.

“The Big Spring Sale was an opportunity for customers to save on seasonally relevant deals across a wide selection of products, including spring fashion, outdoor furniture, lawn and garden essentials, cleaning and organizing products, and more,” an Amazon spokesperson told Digital Commerce 360.

The Big Spring Sale’s best-selling items included:

• COSRX Snail Mucin
• PRETTYGARDEN Women’s Loose Solid Off Shoulder Romper
• Sunzel Flare Leggings
• YKYI Electric Spin Scrubber
• Bluetooth Headphones Wireless Earbuds
• Coleman Breeze Beach Chair

Amazon said that last year Prime members purchased more than 375 million items during the event, making it the biggest Prime Day ever. The mass merchant also said it had its fastest-ever global shipping speeds for Prime members in 2023, with more than 4 billion units arriving the same or next day for U.S. customers and more than 2 billion for those in Europe.

How many countries will Prime Day take place in?

Amazon Prime Day will take place in 24 countries, including:

• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Brazil 
• Canada
• Egypt
• France 
• Germany 
• India
• Italy 
• Japan 
• Luxembourg
• Mexico
• Netherlands 
• Poland
• Portugal
• Saudi Arabia
• Singapore
• Spain
• Sweden
• Turkey
• The United Arab Emirates
• The United States
• The United Kingdom

How much did Amazon make on Prime Day 2023?

Consumers worldwide spent nearly $13 billion with Amazon.com Inc. during the retail giant’s ninth-annual Prime Day, according to Digital Commerce 360 analysis.

Digital Commerce 360 estimates Amazon’s sales on Prime Day 2023 hit $12.90 billion globally during the manufactured retail holiday, which spanned July 11 and 12. That’s up 6.7% year over year from the same shopping spree in 2022, which ran July 12 and 13.

In 2023, Amazon held a second Prime Day sales event Oct. 10-11, 2023. That fall event was called Prime Big Deal Days, and it was announced in a LinkedIn post from Doug Herrington, CEO of Amazon Worldwide Stores. Amazon sellers previously told Digital Commerce 360 they’d been given an Aug. 11 deadline to submit deals for the event.

Shoppers largely avoided big-ticket items in favor of smaller purchases. 58% of purchases in a period of the sale monitored by research firm Numerator cost less than $20, indicating consumer preference for inexpensive products.

The summer Prime Day sales event in 2023 grew less than in the previous year, up 6.7% to $12.9 billion, according to Digital Commerce 360 Research.

When is Prime Day 2024?

The next major Amazon sale will be held in July 2024. Amazon held its last major sale in March.

Amazon Prime Day 2023 was held Tuesday, July 11, and Wednesday, July 12. We’ll update this page regularly to reflect new information. 

Dates for Amazon Prime Day in the past:

• Ninth: July 11-12, 2023
• Eighth: July 12-13, 2022
• Seventh: June 21-22, 2021
• Sixth: Oct 13-14, 2020
• Fifth: July 15-16, 2019
• Fourth: July 16-17, 2018
• Third: July 11-12, 2017
• Second: July 12, 2016
• First: July 15, 2015

How often is Amazon Prime Day?

Until 2022, Amazon Prime Day was once a year in the summer. In 2022, the retail giant added another Prime Day event in October. So how many times a year is Prime Day? The answer used to be once. Amazon has since established a two-year pattern of two separate sales events. This year, it also hosted the Amazon Big Spring Sale for the first time in 2024.

How do you sign up for a Prime membership?

You can join Prime or start a free trial at Amazon Prime Day. Amazon has recently faced a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission alleging the ecommerce giant duped consumers into signing up for its Prime membership service and deliberately made it hard to cancel. 

How to prepare to find deals on Prime Day 

The value of Prime Day to retailers both small and large is undisputed, as millions of shoppers visit the site in search of once-a-year deals.

• Sign up for the Prime Insider newsletter to hear about Amazon Prime member benefits and find updates on deals and events.
• Create deal alerts for recommendations. As an Amazon Prime Member, you can subscribe to receive deal alert notifications related to recent Amazon searches and recently viewed items. All you have to do is visit the Prime Day event page on the Amazon app before Prime Day to create deal alerts. Once Prime Day arrives, members will receive push notifications on any available deals.
• Get deal notifications from Alexa. Alexa can make sure you don’t miss any Amazon deals. Members can add products to their Wish List, Cart, or Save for Later, and then ask Alexa to notify them about the deal.
• Set a reminder so you don’t miss the multi-day event.
• Check back here to see the latest updates.

What are the Big Spring Sale and Big Deal Days, and how are they different from Prime Days?

Amazon called this year’s inaugural March promotional period its Big Spring Sale. In October 2023, it created a new fall sale event called Big Deal Days. Amazon’s Big Spring Sale is not exclusive to Prime members. The online retailer also held a fall sale in 2022 for the first time, called the Early Access Sale.

Prime Day is now Amazon’s biggest sale of the year. It is usually held during the summer months. In 2023, it was July 12 and July 13. Historically, the annual two-day deals event is for Prime members only. 

Prime Day, which features deals on many products on Amazon.com, began in 2015 as a celebration of Amazon’s 20th year in business. It turned into a summer sales holiday designed to drum up additional business for Amazon — and the retailer’s marketplace sellers — before the holiday shopping season. In recent years, other large retailers have offered promotions on their own websites around Prime Day to take advantage of the additional online shoppers.

Abbas Haleem, Brian Warmoth, Mary Meisenzahl, James Risley and Paul Conley contributed to this report.

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The post Amazon announces dates for Prime Day 2024 event appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.

These same merchants also want £1 billion ($1.28 billion) from Amazon. The British Independent Retailers Association is representing the merchants in a newly filed lawsuit. The association alleges Amazon is “illegally misusing their data and manipulating the Amazon Buy Box to benefit its commercial operation and its overall revenues and profit.”

The lawsuit filed in a London court stated that between October 2015 and the present date, Amazon used data belonging to UK retailers on the company’s marketplace. It says the data is non-public and belongs solely and specifically to the retailers.

Amazon has yet to comment publicly on the lawsuit.

The Featured Offer (formerly Buy Box) is a window that appears at the top right of a product detail page. It’s above the Buy Now button.

“This automated component lifts products above the competition to help customers find what they need and compare alternatives based on factors like product price, condition, and shipping speed,” Amazon says.

Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 1000, Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. Amazon is also No. 3 in Digital Commerce 360’s Global Online Marketplaces Database, which ranks the 100 largest such marketplaces by third-party GMV.

Why are UK merchants filing a lawsuit against Amazon?

Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges Amazon used the data in combination with manipulating the Amazon Buy Box. In doing so, the suit says, Amazon used a product-entry strategy that diverted sales revenue and profits from these retailers to Amazon.

“By misusing their proprietary data to bring to market rival products that are sold cheaper, Amazon is effectively pushing many of the UK’s independent retailers out of the market,” according to the lawsuit. “The consequences of Amazon’s abusive conduct have been to inflate its profits and harm the UK retail sector, especially the smaller independent retailers who are struggling at a time of difficult economic circumstances.”

The lawsuit alleges that Amazon alleges that products sold by third-party retailers were less likely to appear in the Buy Box than Amazon’s products, reinforcing the anticompetitive effect of Amazon’s decisions to take sales away from third-party retailers.

“Amazon set itself up through these unlawful practices to maximize the profit it would make and, in doing so, it must have known about the damage it would cause to third-party retailers,” according to the lawsuit.

“One might ask why an independent retailer would use Amazon if it were so damaging to their business?” says association president Andrew Goodacre. “In reality, we have seen a significant shift in consumer buying behavior and, if small businesses want to sell online, Amazon is the dominant marketplace in the UK. As a result, for small retailers with limited resources, Amazon is the marketplace to start online trading. While the retailers knew about the large commissions charged by Amazon, they did not know about the added risk of their trading data being used by Amazon to take sales away from them.”

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The third annual Automotive Aftermarket Digital Health Report reviews nearly 13,000 product pages across eight auto parts categories on the ecommerce sites of seven merchants: RockAuto.com, Advance Auto Parts, Amazon, Auto Zone, NAPA, O’Reilly Auto Parts and Walmart. The report was produced recently by Content Status, a digital content management technology provider, and Pivotree, a digital agency and systems integrator.

For displaying products online effectively, the report notes the significance of developing:
● An effective product data taxonomy for helping online buyers discover products across multiple categories.

● Comprehensive and accurate product descriptions with images to help buyers decide on purchases and become loyal customers, leading to increased conversion rates and sales.

But the report found that only about half of the reviewed merchants’ ecommerce sites followed effective product data management procedures.

For example, it found:

● 49.4% “adhere highly to category taxonomy and intermediary category page guidelines.”

● 50% “adhere highly to product image and gallery user interface (UI) guidelines.

● 40% “adhere highly to product information and specification guidelines.”

● 66% of displayed products have only four or fewer images.

● 82% of displayed products don’t include 360-degree spin images.

● 82% of products have no videos.

The report also notes the challenges merchants face in receiving and managing often incomplete product data, often in various formats, from multiple suppliers. “Incomplete or inaccurate product information hampers your customer’s ability to make informed decisions, resulting in decreased conversion rates and diminished customer trust.”

Automotive aftermarket lags in digital content

It adds that, despite digital technology improvements for automating and streamlining data management, “the automotive aftermarket industry remains heavily reliant on manual entry, review and normalization of data,” resulting in a lack of efficiency and accuracy in managing effective online product content.

The report breaks out performance scores for the seven retailers by overall content management, data taxonomy, and content by eight auto product categories, including brakes, car batteries, fuel pumps and oil filters.

Although the report singles out Amazon and Walmart as overall leaders, its retailer scores vary widely across the multiple scoring areas. For overall content, it cites Amazon as tops for “providing more content than other retailers.”

For taxonomy, the report scores AutoZone highest, followed by NAPA, while giving Amazon a “poor” score.

Among the eight product categories, the report calls out several retailers for effective content strategies, such as Advance Auto Parts with detailed product descriptions in brake rotors and O’Reilly in spark plugs for detailed product descriptions and 360-degree images.

The report found that car batteries had the most effective content overall among all retailers, and it cited Rock Auto for providing specification documents for all of its featured battery products.

It found oil filters to have the most lacking content overall but cited Walmart and Amazon “as the clear leaders in this category by consistently providing more content.”

But while the report gave Walmart and Amazon the highest scores for oil filter product descriptions, it gave Walmart a “poor” imaging score for lacking documentation and rich images.

Paul Demery is a Digital Commerce 360 contributing editor covering B2B digital commerce technology and strategy. paul@digitalcommerce360.com.

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Nominate a game-changer for the Global B2B eCommerce Industry Awards from Digital Commerce 360 and the B2B Ecommerce Association.

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The post Want to sell that oil filter online? Spruce up the product data. appeared first on Digital Commerce 360.