Amazon Sales Up While Most Retailers Suffer

Online retailer Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) completed the 2008 holiday shopping season with exceptionally strong overall results. Overall, spending per customer was $163.63 up 17% from $139.78 in 2007, according to data gathered by Geezeo's Main Street Spending Index (MSSI).

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Customer spending per visit was up 4% to $52.54 in December from $50.52 the previous year. Visits per customer during the month showed a much stronger gain of 12% from 2.77 to 3.11.

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These numbers are more impressive given the overall challenges in the retail sector. Expect Amazon to continue to see strong growth as online shopping continues to outperform brick and mortar retailers.

Comments

[Geezho:]

Geezeo? WTF is a Geezeo? Lame.

Jan 08 10:59 AM

[The Good Ne...:]

Yet one more indicator that as this retail dip subsides, the Giants like Wal-mart who are taking a beating today, we'll continue to get beat at their own discount game until they fully understand the amazon ploy.

As we saw yesterday in the Geezeo post, even the traditional discount retailers get it during this downswing.

The giant is failing... there are some new kids on the blog ready to rumble.

Okay let's see, job losses are down now for six weeks straight (including the 4-week moving average and the report out today)
mast-economy.blogspot....
AND
Discount retailers (with the exception of the Titanic) are thriving during the Christmas season....
If you lose your job at Wal-mart, it's pretty clear to me you'll get a better one somewhere else...

Jan 08 01:10 PM

[zeronimo:]

that's the reason why you should dump ebay.

Jan 08 01:53 PM

[Gid:]

No doubt Amazon's removal of the "30-day Price Guarantee" was a nice boost to their bottom line, but let's see how well that strategy works in the long run, competing with e-tailers that ALL offer 30-day guarantees, and Costco, Walmart, BestBuy, too. They're dropped the hammer on customers with no notification whatsoever. Real pigs!

Jan 08 04:44 PM

[Ahmad Nagy:]

Good indicators

Jan 09 12:31 AM

[David Tsao:]

It's still to early to tell what's going on with Amazon. Whether its visits/month, comscore readings, or Oprah pumping up Kindle, you need to focus on the company's operating margins which have been historically low. The company has done very well with respect to increasing the value perception with Amazon Prime/free shipping amongst its customer base. It works well in these times. However they've done so well that they can not remove this program without taking a massive order volume hit. Their shipping programs cost the company roughly 2.5% of Net Sales over the trailing 6 quarters. It's been creeping up quarter to quarter and nibbling away some bits from their operating margins.

It's an upward trend. They will have to up their revenues to keep their margins, or face interesting choices:

- Jack up the Amazon Prime membership
- Reduce free shipping coverage on specific product categories
- Drop the program all together (this would hurt them pretty bad, doubt they would do this but you never know)

What would do in Bezos' shoes?

Jan 09 12:36 AM