Marketplaces

In just five years, Amazon.com’s annual Prime Day sales event has gone from a way for the online retail giant to promote its Prime membership program to a nationwide shopping holiday. Amazon began this year's 48-hour sale (up from lat year's 36 hours) at 12:00 a.m. PST this morning, and it will run until tomorrow…

Next week (July 15-16) sees the return of Amazon Prime Day, which last year proved to be the biggest shopping event in history with more than 100 million items purchased worldwide. With Amazon Prime membership continuing to see double-digit growth, Amazon.com expects to sell even more products this year on Prime Day. The event is…

The retail industry has undergone a significant transformation over the past decade, largely due to the disruptive force commonly referred to as the “Amazon Effect.” By the end of 2019, Amazon is projected to see its share of the total U.S. e-commerce market reach 52.4 percent, up from 48 percent in 2018, and is responsible…

Amazon.com is no longer just a place where shoppers turn to find their tried-and-true favorites in a pinch or at reduced (or free) shipping costs. According to our recent Amazon Shopping Behavior survey, the e-commerce site is now a bona fide product discovery hub. In fact, a whopping 75 percent of shoppers say they look…

For those in the automotive retail space, nothing is more coveted than a J.D. Power award. It has become the auto industry’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Receiving it means that your product has gone through the rigors of testing and customer feedback and its nameplate stands apart. Digital commerce could learn a thing or…

Successfully selling on Amazon.com requires a dramatically different skill set than what today’s brands use across their own e-commerce websites. Many of these brands, which have been historically reluctant to sell on marketplaces, are reworking their e-commerce strategies to include Amazon at the center for the significant brand-building and revenue-generating opportunity it represents. This year,…

It’s impossible to discuss retail or e-commerce these days without mentioning Amazon.com. Much has been written about Amazon being the demise of small retailers and startups, and many articles offer ideas on how to compete or work around the 800-pound gorilla. But sometimes the old adage “if you’ can’t beat them, join them” holds true.…

In episode 188 of Total Retail Talks, Executive Editor Joe Keenan interviews Karl Varsanyi, group vice president of digital product management and user experience at Albertsons Companies. Listen in as Varsanyi discusses the launch of Albertsons online marketplace with partner Mirakl, and how the grocer is using customer data obtained from its online marketplace to influence…

Amazon.com recently tested a feature in its mobile app that showed products on other sellers’ product pages for lower-priced items, often from Amazon's own private labels, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. For example, if someone was searching for AAA batteries on Amazon and got a sponsored link for Energizer, they would click on the…

In this episode of Retail Right Now, Joe Keenan discusses Amazon.com’s decision earlier this week to eliminate a rule that kept U.S.-based third-party merchants selling products on its marketplace from selling those same products in other channels, such as their own websites, for lower prices. Critics of Amazon cited the “price parity provisions” as a violation…