PYMNTS Intelligence has been closely monitoring the competition between two of America’s retail giants, Amazon and Walmart, since 2019 and shares our findings in regularly published reports.
Despite ever-changing market conditions, Amazon’s 2019 pay-to-play report shows that new consumer spending data reveals Amazon is far ahead of Walmart in 2019. Its growth has been based on a slow and steady rise that began in the early 1990s. Current dominant position in the US retail market.
As of the first quarter of 2019, Amazon accounted for 1.7% of total US consumer retail spending (1 percentage point lower than Walmart’s 2.7% share), as the accompanying graph shows. (This is a big difference in terms of scale.) And for more than a year, the e-commerce giant continued to lag far behind Walmart in terms of retail consumers served. That changed in the third quarter of 2020, with sales from both organizations accounting for 2.9% of consumer retail spending.
After that, the tide began to tilt in Amazon’s favor.
From the third quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of 2022, the two retailers competed fiercely, except for a new pattern that emerged: Amazon’s sales exceeded Walmart’s in the final quarter of each year. Otherwise, the competition between the two retailers was pretty close.
After their paths crossed in Q2 2022, Amazon’s sales began to overtake Walmart’s in serious fashion (probably driven by a major shift in online shopping preferences during the pandemic). The e-commerce giant hasn’t looked back since.
More recent PYMNTS Intelligence data (as of Q4 2023) shows that Amazon has expanded its leadership with stakes in several key discretionary categories, including home furnishings, electronics, personal care products, and clothing. It confirms that there is. Sales in these areas not only helped Amazon control 4.4% of all U.S. consumer spending as of the fourth quarter, but also helped Big Tech companies account for 10% of total U.S. retail sales in 2023 last year. He also contributed to gaining %. At the same time, Amazon’s online sales also grew rapidly by 17% year-on-year, with online sales alone totaling $22.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, accounting for 16% of total sales in 2023.
Meanwhile, Walmart lagged behind Amazon in online sales in Q4 2023, but the overall performance is still noteworthy considering Amazon’s online presence. Walmart’s share of retail sales and consumer spending has been roughly flat quarter-over-quarter since the beginning of 2021, but the company expects to increase its share of all U.S. consumer retail spending in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to data from PYMNTS Intelligence. It ended 2023 with 7.3% of the total. The retailer also captured 3% of total U.S. consumer spending in the quarter, which translates to nearly $141 billion in sales.
This data confirms Amazon’s current dominance over U.S. retail sales, but Walmart alone is not enough, with sales from both retailers combined accounting for 6.5% of total U.S. consumer spending in 2023 last year. It is important to remember that .
