蘑菇AV

Social media and TV are the top channels that consumer packaged goods (CPG) consumers use to find new products, but in-store still plays an important role in product discovery. Meanwhile, Amazon and Walmart are fighting to capture share of CPG product searches, though in-store consumers are more likely to turn to Google for help.

The top five digital grocers in the US will capture 67.2% of the country鈥檚 grocery ecommerce sales in 2022. That figure will rise slightly over the next two years, with leaders Walmart Inc. and Amazon growing their shares by about 1 percentage point each.

Amazon is at a grocery inflection point, battling Walmart and Instacart for ecommerce dominance in the US. While each has its own strengths, Amazon鈥檚 ecommerce background gives it a leg up in tech.

Amazon Fresh, despite failing to gain traction with its brick-and-mortar endeavors, is trying to assert itself in the grocery space. Its customer base, though much smaller than competitors like Walmart and Target, is attractive to consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers because those shoppers are open to trying new products.

Large retailers are in a prime position for the final holiday push: Amazon, Target, and Walmart are poised to leverage their infrastructures to capture an outsize share of spend and retail media dollars.

Recently, both Walmart and Target have warned that consumers鈥� cautious spending habits may lead to a sluggish holiday season this year. Were they right to be worried? Here鈥檚 how the holiday shopping season is going so far.

DoorDash has ended its four-year partnership with Walmart, saying the split will enable it to focus on its long-term customer relationships. DoorDash works with retailers, like Albertsons and Macy鈥檚, and thousands of restaurants across the globe, creating a marketplace for consumer discovery and advertising for its partners.

Walmart and Target joined 1,600 merchants rallying around the divisive credit card routing bill鈥攚hose prospects aren鈥檛 bright.

The 15 biggest US ecommerce players aren鈥檛 a surprise (here鈥檚 looking at you, Amazon, Walmart, and Apple). User-friendly mobile apps, quick delivery, innovation, and converting sales are what turn retailers into ecommerce powerhouses. Here are the companies our analysts believe best exemplify those features within the 15 largest ecommerce players.

On today's episode, we discuss what to make of Twitter changing its name to X, whether Walmart is crushing Amazon in the grocery wars, what a billboard in your living room would look like, what Gen Z has done to the purchase funnel, why Airbnb doesn't have a loyalty program, what the most popular museums around the world are, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our vice president of content Suzy Davidkhanian and analysts Blake Droesch and Carina Perkins.

Consumer spending patterns shifted in 2023: Retailers like Walmart, TJ Maxx, and E.l.f Beauty benefited from consumers growing cost consciousness.

To compound Dollar General鈥檚 problems, while its core lower-income customer is under considerable financial pressure, middle- and higher-income customers are not feeling stretched enough to trade down to dollar stores, preferring instead to stick with Walmart or else go straight to Temu.

However, marketplaces operated by Walmart and Temu are growing faster, underscoring the appeal of their low-cost offerings to deal-seeking US consumers. Click here to view our full forecast for US Amazon marketplace sales. Temu鈥檚 share of US marketplace sales will near eBay鈥檚 in 2025.

Online merchants now top all other channels, just barely surpassing mass-market retailers such as Walmart and Target among other brick-and-mortar options. Mass retailers and drugstores lost the most market share among all channels for health and wellness products between 2020 and 2024.

The ecommerce search experience is ripe for reinvention: Pinterest, Walmart, Etsy, and others are relying on AI to deliver more relevant results and drive sales.

Grubhub鈥檚 appeal: Former Walmart executive Marc Lore founded Wonder in 2018 with a vision of rethinking the traditional food delivery model. Instead of preparing delivery orders in restaurants, Wonder鈥檚 mobile kitchens would prepare customers鈥� orders in their driveways, using celebrity-chef-developed recipes.

By that measure, it is the largest mass merchandiser in the country, ahead of Walmart and trailing only Loblaw Companies Ltd.

For example, Walmart last week announced sweeping policy rollbacks, including withdrawing from a major LGBTQ+ index. Why it matters: Even as many companies abandon diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, research consistently shows public support for them.

That won鈥檛 be easy given that it is competing against retailers such as Walmart and Kroger that operate thousands of stores.

"Nobody ever talks about Sam's Club as much as they talk about Walmart, but they really are doing some cool things when it comes to making the shopping experience more frictionless," our analyst Suzy Davidkhanian said. "They're not using technology to use technology, they're using it to solve a problem, and I think that's probably what makes them stand out the most.".

Walmart expands third-party seller features as it tries to take on Amazon: The retailer is seeing early results from its marketplace initiatives, but its share of the market will remain at just 2.2% this year compared with Amazon鈥檚 72.4%.

Just 15.8% of US retail media spend will go to networks that aren鈥檛 Amazon or Walmart, per our November 2024 forecast. That means retail media ad buyers will need to be selective about where investments go. While many networks are comparable (such as similar grocery retailers), they each offer unique audiences, measurement capacities, and ad formats.

Search engines came in second, followed by Walmart.com, YouTube, and Target.com. This was originally featured in the Retail Daily newsletter. For more retail insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.

Without the advantage of de minimis, Shein and Temu would lose their price advantage relative to players like Amazon and Walmart. The two also face growing competition from Amazon, which is challenging Shein and Temu on their own turf with its own low-cost marketplace, Haul, where all products sell for $20 or less.

Amazon and Walmart are among the retailers that have implemented generative search on their shopping platforms. Tech heavyweights are also moving quickly. Meta is working on its own AI-powered engine, while other players have rolled out search functions, including:. Google: AI Overviews. OpenAI: SearchGPT. Perplexity: Pro Search and a macOS desktop app. Microsoft: Bing Generative Search.