Fascinating Amazon Facts
Founded in Jeff Bezos’ garage in 1994, one time bookselling marketplace Amazon has grown into a behemothic monster of an ecommerce company. Amazon now sells a vast range of products and has significant market dominance. A combination of clever marketing, monopoly building strategies and price gouging led Amazon to grow beyond the scale of any other commercial enterprise. Here are some fascinating facts about the largest shop in the world.
Third Party Sales
Around 50 percent of all products sold on Amazon come from 3rd party sellers. This is a unique situation. Amazon is a marketplace that contains myriad sub-markets that can be exploited. Many businesses make a large portion of their sales by routing them through the near spotless Amazon ecommerce structure.
The importance of Amazon to 3rd party sellers has led to an explosion of industries that rely almost entirely upon the company for business. Amazon marketing agencies, Amazon SEO consultancies and courier companies have all sprung up in order to help 3rd party sellers make money using the platform.
They Have A Vast Share Of The Market
Amazon’s ecommerce market share is increasing at a baffling rate. In 2021 it rose to 50 percent – up from 37 percent in 2018. This kind of market dominance is almost completely unprecedented during the internet age and has led to some criticism from people rightly concerned about market monopolization. For sellers, however, this market dominance means that it is absolutely essential to make Amazon part of their larger business plan. A great many sellers have Amazon shops in addition to their independent ecommerce websites. The sheer size of the company makes it impossible to ignore.
Absurd Visitor Numbers
With all that market dominance it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody that Amazon can boast absolutely ridiculous visitor numbers. The ecommerce behemoth recently became the 5th most visited website online. Around 5 billion people visit the website every single month.
Only Google, YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia have higher visitor numbers. These visitor numbers make Amazon a fertile ground for advertising. Advertising on marketing is a significant source of revenue for the already cash flushed company. Amazon capitalizes on huge visitor numbers by broadening services to include streaming and cloud storage. These services had a head start by piggybacking on Amazon’s vast online footprint.
It Changed The Shopping Experience
Love it or loathe it, you cannot deny that Amazon has significantly changed the commercial landscape. Consumers used to Amazon now expect timely service, extremely quick delivery times and very competitive prices. This has led to a crisis within retail as a whole, as Amazon’s size makes it nearly impossible to compete with the giant. Most companies simply join in – starting Amazon selling accounts alongside their usual operations.
Delivery speed is constantly being improved by the company. Amazon prime users can expect free next day delivery to nearly every location. This is possible due to the network of fulfillment centers and vast fleet of couriers operated by Amazon. Amazon has changed commerce significantly – and potentially irreversibly.
