With Amazon Prime Day looming, retailers and marketers are prepping their strategies for what’s turned into a new midyear shopping holiday in the three short years since its debut. The latest eMarketer forecast shows that Amazon continues to set the pace for U.S. retail ecommerce and will account for more than 80 percent of the overall market’s expected growth this year.
This story originally appeared on eMarketer Retail.
Total US Amazon retail ecommerce sales (gross merchandise value) are expected to hit $258.22 billion in 2018, up 29 percent over 2017 – far exceeding total U.S. retail ecommerce’s growth of 16 percent.
Amazon has double-digit U.S. retail ecommerce market share across every product category, according to eMarketer tracking, with the fastest-growing categories in 2018 expected to be food and beverage, apparel and accessories, and health, personal care and beauty.
Amazon Prime Day is a way for the ecommerce giant to get more consumers signed up for Prime, and to reward those who are already members with special sales and discounts. eMarket Retail expects Prime participation will reach 58.7 million households and 109.5 million users in the U.S. in 2018, a 12.5 percent increase from the prior year.
