Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The rate of eCommerce growth as steadily outpaced total retail growth by a multiple of three to four times, Amazon.com’s growth has outpaced eCommerce by one to two times, giving it a dominant lead in many of the world’s most mature eCommerce markets. According to Forrester, Amazon drove 60% of total US online sales growth in 2015, capturing $23 billion more in U.S. eCommerce sales in 2015 than the previous year (up from $77 billion in 2014 to $100 billion). 

Alex McCord of Compass Marketing, an agency which works with some of the world’s largest CPG brands: “We’re now seeing the advent of what I’ll call e-commerce native companies: companies that come onto Amazon and other e-retailers and who are able to gain traction through getting a ton of recent reviews. They know how to work the Amazon algorithm and then launch products that, from the perspective of a brand in the brick-and-mortar world, have as low as zero market share. But in the world of unbranded search on Amazon and other retailers, they’re enormous players.”

So who is winning on Amazon?

Profitero analyzed our Amazon FastMovers reports between January-May 2016 to rank the best-selling products at Amazon in several key categories. We then identified the number of products that featured in the top 100 best sellers by brand to determine best-selling brands by category....

Subscription services have become popular among online shoppers, but those same shoppers are also abandoning these services.

Through these subscriptions, customers make recurring payments and receive order shipments at regular intervals, and they have become popular because they let consumers refill products they need to replenish often, such as health and beauty products.

These services typically personalize orders based on a shopper's interests and style, which the companies often learn through connected social media accounts and quizzes. This experience mirrors the personalized service customers would get inside brick-and-mortar stores from sales associates.

So interest in these services has remained high, as 10% of U.S. shoppers have enrolled in one, and another 33% would consider doing so, according to the latest UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper report.

But satisfaction in these services is dropping, as 61% of those who have signed up have since canceled. And there are four main reasons why....