New insight into eCommerce growth in the third quarter of 2016 has found that publicly traded online retailers outperformed even the overall well-performing eCommerce market — with gains largely due to Amazon.
The Department of Commerce released data in November that showed that eCommerce in the U.S. continued to see growth in the third quarter of 2016. Total online sales grew 15.6 percent in the third quarter year over year.
Online sales reached a total $93.67 billion, with total retail sales in the three months ending Sept. 30 reaching $1.2 trillion. This means that eCommerce accounted for 7.7 percent of sales overall for Q3, up from 7.5 in Q2 and in line with the first quarter of 2016.
Internet Retailer’s E-Retail Quarterly Financial Report found that 32 publicly held eCommerce companies with quarterly data actually grew 22.5 percent in the third quarter of 2016 to $41.32 billion, up from $33.73 billion in the same period of 2015.
Alone, the report found that Amazon’s third-quarter revenue from sales, commissions and merchant fees rose 26.7 percent to $29.48 billion, up from $23.27 billion a year ago. This means that Amazon accounted for 81.7 percent of the third quarter’s total web revenue growth reported for the 32 publicly held online retailers surveyed. Additionally, Amazon brought in another $3.23 billion in revenue in the third quarter of 2016 from its cloud storage service.
Taking Amazon’s sales out of the equation, the report found that the other 31 public e-retailers saw online sales revenue growth of 13.3 percent on average. Thirteen of the e-retailers in the study grew faster than the 13 percent average. Reportedly, web merchants like Ulta Beauty and Wayfair exceeded a 50 percent rate of growth in Q3 2016. On the flip side, 18 online merchants grew slower than the average, with four seeing sales declines.
So in case there was any doubt, right now it really is Amazon’s world.
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