The Top 1000 retailers, the foremost North America-based retailers by ecommerce sales, experienced a remarkable compound annual growth rate of 20.7% during the pandemic period from 2020 to 2022, surpassing the 17.7% growth rate of previous years. Interestingly, Amazon faced a slight decline in market share among the Top 1000 as retail chains with physical stores and consumer brand manufacturers made gains.
Key Highlights:
- Top 1000 retailers witnessed a 5.1% increase in global online sales in 2022, reaching a total of $1.022 trillion. This marked the first year of single-digit growth in over a decade.
- Amazon’s three-year growth rate during the pandemic stood at 20.3%, slightly lower than the overall Top 1000’s rate of 20.7%.
- Smaller Top 1000 merchants, particularly those ranked Nos. 501-1000, outperformed larger retailers in 2022, achieving web sales growth of 6.1% compared to 5.1% for retailers ranked Nos. 1-500 in the Top 1000.
The shift to online shopping during the three-year COVID-19 pandemic brought an additional $75 billion in ecommerce revenue to the Top 1000 retailers. This surge in sales was well-distributed among North America’s leading merchants in terms of online sales.
While Amazon.com Inc. retained its top position in the Top 1000, the recently released 2023 Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 report revealed that it lost some market share to Retail Chains and Consumer Brand Manufacturers between 2020 and 2022. Notably, retailers ranked Nos. 501-1000 saw higher growth in comparison to the top 500 retailers in terms of web sales.
Before the pandemic, the Top 1000’s global online sales were growing at a rate of 17.7% annually for five years. If this trend had continued, the total sales for the Top 1000 would have amounted to $947 billion in 2022. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in online sales of $1.022 trillion for the same year, infusing an additional $75 billion into the accounts of Top 1000 retailers between 2020 and 2022.
Furthermore, this growth led to the second consecutive year where Top 1000 online sales exceeded $1 trillion. Over the three-year period of the pandemic, the Top 1000 achieved a compound annual growth rate of 20.7%, three percentage points higher than the pre-pandemic rate. The cumulative three-year stacked growth rate for the Top 1000 was 75.9%.
When examining different categories, Retail Chains and Consumer Brand Manufacturers experienced the fastest growth, while Direct Marketers, and retailers selling through printed catalogs or TV shopping shows, showed the slowest growth. The growth rate of Web Only retailers was 19.7%, slightly lower than the Top 1000 average of 20.7%. Amazon’s growth rate stood at 20.3%, while the other 427 Web Only retailers in the Top 1000 grew at 17.9%.
During the pandemic period, Retail Chains made significant gains, increasing their share of Top 1000 sales from 32.5% in 2019 to 34.3% in 2022. On the other hand, Web Only retailers’ share declined from 49.6% to 48.3% during the same period. Amazon’s share of Top 1000 sales also decreased from 36.9% in 2019 to 36.5% in 2022. Smaller Web Only retailers saw a more substantial decline, dropping to 11.8% in 2022 from 12.7% three years earlier.
As the pandemic and its restrictions eased, consumers returned to physical stores, resulting in a slowdown in growth for the Top 1000. In 2022, the collective online sales of the Top 1000 only increased by 5.1%, the first time since the 2008-2009 recession that growth fell into single digits. Consumer Brand Manufacturers experienced the highest growth in 2022 at 8.3%, followed by Retail Chains at 5.7%.
Despite the dominance of giants like Amazon, Walmart Inc., and Apple Inc., smaller online retailers continued to thrive. In 2022, retailers ranked Nos. 501-1000 in the Top 1000 achieved a growth rate of 6.1%, and those ranked Nos. 1001-2000 in the Digital Commerce 360 database grew by 5.9%. Both groups outperformed the Top 500 retailers’ growth rate of 5.1%.
During the pandemic, online retail sales outpaced total retail sales in North America, leading to a significant increase in ecommerce penetration in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Courtesy: www.digitalcommerce360.com
