from Hacker News

Amazon’s share of the US e-commerce market is now 49%

by base on 7/13/18, 5:55 PM with 287 comments

• by rcar1046 on 7/14/18, 1:15 AM

  Almost every Amazon thread on HN seems to devolve into stories of receiving counterfeit goods. I order around 10 items per week on Amazon and have never received anything counterfeit or suspect over a decade of shopping.

  It takes very little effort to weed out bad actors imo. Perhaps this is a case of the negative experiences only being shared? Or...I'm better at online shopping. I'm guessing the former, but it gets tiring watching companies grow from loved to hated once they reach such a critical mass.

  Nobody likes to root for the favorite I suppose.

• by pnathan on 7/13/18, 9:19 PM

  Time and again I can't find what I'm looking for in brick and mortar, but it's on Amazon. Original companies don't always have a direct sales arm.

  I avoid buying gadgets from Amazon, but other than that... ::shrug:: They've got it nailed. Worlds better than brick and mortar for non-boutique goods.

• by verelo on 7/13/18, 8:18 PM

  Good. Today i called Amazon to complain something i ordered never arrived. No questions asked refunded. Needed it urgently so went to a brick and mortar store down the road to buy it. 3x the price, and they took 15 minutes to process my sale. If anyone wants to match the amazon experience anywhere else in my life, take my money!

• by dawhizkid on 7/13/18, 10:29 PM

  Amazon search, reviews, product ratings have been completely gamed by third party sellers.

  Type in "wireless headphones" and the top results is completely full of counterfeit or knockoff goods. It's shocking how little news this makes in major publications.

• by atonse on 7/13/18, 8:48 PM

  When I wanted to buy a Hakko Soldering Iron, I heard that there are counterfeit ones on Amazon. So instead of getting 2 day shipping, I got the nearly 1+ week shipping direct from Hakko. But I know it'll be authentic.

  Same with Adafruit products, and I'm increasingly noticing that if I want to make sure something absolutely won't be fake, I buy direct from the retailer.

  It sucks. You get spoiled by Amazon's amazing "free" shipping especially if you're a prime member.

  But it's more important to me that a product is genuine. I'll learn to be a bit more patient.

• by ur-whale on 7/13/18, 8:26 PM

  Is US e-commerce susceptible to 51% attacks?

• by lawrenceyan on 7/13/18, 9:44 PM

  A company that Amazon can learn a lot from is JD.com in regards to counterfeit items and customer trust. When you buy a product using JD backed shipping, you are guaranteed to get a real product, which is especially important in a country like China where authenticity is extremely coveted in a world of frauds/fakes.

  It might not be as highly held in people's minds here in the US, but I still think there's a limit, and Amazon has definitely crossed it at this point. Continuing to allow the amount of counterfeit goods that currently circulates throughout their warehouses will permanently stain Amazon's reputation if something isn't done soon. Trust is difficult build up, and almost impossible to regain once lost.

• by jamestimmins on 7/13/18, 8:48 PM

  I suspect the defense (whether it's valid or not is for lawyers to debate) is that if 68% of Amazon's sales are the result of other sellers using their marketplace, it isn't quite accurate to say that these sales belong to Amazon.

• by foxhop on 7/13/18, 10:09 PM

  Does anyone understand just how bad this statistic, if true, is?

  It almost seems like there is room for somebody to disrupt Amazon by building a better e-commerce mousetrap and getting multiple retailers and distributors to co'operate with it.

• by dredmorbius on 7/13/18, 10:31 PM

  The big news here for me is the well-below-forecast growth of ecommerce.

  I'd first noted this for years ago[1]. In an earlier, 2010 TechCrunch piece,[2] Forrester Research predicted a $250 billion e-commerce market, 8% of all retail, by 2014. We're just barely reaching 10% in 2018.

  U.S. census estimated 5.3% in 2013.[3]

  The hype's not measuring up. E-commerce has growwth resistance.

  ________________________________

  Notes:

  1. https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/243in1/privacy...

  2. https://techcrunch.com/2010/03/08/forrester-forecast-online-...

  3. https://www.sba.gov/advocacy/analysis-internet-sales-taxatio...

• by deanCommie on 7/13/18, 10:13 PM

  I feel like the current backlash against Amazon fails to consider the question: What would the alternative be if Amazon never adopted the 3rd party Marketplace or added the international sellers?

  Selection would be significantly smaller. Some percentage of items that are currently getting overwhelmed with fraud would be available safer, sure, but likely at a much higher price (competition lowers prices, after all).

  Everyone remembers the time they got a crappy knockoff, or had to filter through fake reviews. But most of the time, people just search for something, buy it, and are satisfied, never having to consider whether it was only fulfilled by Amazon.

  At least there is a consistent search/shopping experience, and the refunds are generally instantaneous and there are no questions asked. You can't say that about dealextreme, or alibaba, or dozens of other sites we'd be forced to use if Amazon didn't decide to take on the long tail fo sellers and become responsible for solving the fraud use cases.

• by nafizh on 7/14/18, 12:31 AM

  Amazon's customer care experience is second to none. I have been a prime member for almost 4 years now, and every time I had a problem, it was instantly resolved, no questions asked. The only company whose customer care is at par with them is Apple.

• by mdev on 7/13/18, 8:36 PM

  I can see someone else complete by having a competitive prime product equivalent for half the cost and remove unnecessary services. When I think about pricing its not very obvious to tack the $99 fee onto individual orders but you should since you're paying for it(I used to order 50+ times year from amazon and now its down to about 10-15 so it's harder to justify). Also, I rarely use other prime free products.

  I'd be willing to move to Walmart or Google Express if they have a good selection and lower minimums + decent shipping times in return for a small yearly membership. I can still use amazon for larger purchases or pay a small premium for shipping as needed.

• by fma on 7/14/18, 3:13 AM

  Walmart had been improving but I don't know why, as big as they are, they don't step up their game.

  I ordered somethings last night (Thursday). Walmart and Amazon offered free two day shipping.

  Amazon will arrive Sunday... Walmart Tuesday, with two items arriving Friday. All Walmart items were sold directly by Walmart and not third party.

  The fact I even purchased from Walmart is a testament to their competitive pricing s d selection... But shipping... Needs some work.

• by kbos87 on 7/14/18, 1:47 AM

  Amazon is enemy #1 of small business. It blows my mind that people don’t see this and are so quick to don a badge of how many items they order per week.

• by mnm1 on 7/14/18, 8:45 PM

  It's amazing they have gotten this far but can't even deliver packages properly. The last few orders, they haven't even tried. Their new delivery service is manned by idiots who can't even read maps. What's worse is that they will lie and say they attempted delivery, but they don't leave a note or anything because they don't even go by the house. I understand the job sucks big time for the drivers, but this is unacceptable no matter what. 2 day shipping my ass. The packages delivered with Amazon's service simply never arrive. Then there's the matter of them closing accounts, lying that there were some violations of undisclosed policy, and stealing the prime payments. Of course people are going to return an inordinate amount of stuff when most of the stuff available to buy is fake or shoddy quality. Every time I go back and give them another chance, I regret it. I guess others are less sensitive to such issues.

• by mynameishere on 7/13/18, 8:26 PM

  I've been using walmart.com occasionally and honestly it reminds me of how Amazon used to be: A smaller selection but no weird spammy cruft. Amazon makes a lot of money on sketchy 3rd parties. Also no "premium" membership ripoff (ie prime). You still have to use amazon for reviews though.

• by jaclaz on 7/15/18, 12:37 PM

  A curious thing that happened me last month.

  I needed one of those kits (the "professional" ones) to try and remove dents from car bodies with hot glue, dent puller, etc.

  A "real" professional kit costs around 400-500 Euros here (Italy) and since I needed it only for a small experiment (attempting to straighten a collapsed stainless steel fume pipe) I wasn't going to get one of those.

  After finding on e-bay an el cheapo (but not too shabby) Chinese kit with just the stuff I needed (some have also mirrors and levers I didnt need) for around 70 euro, I ordered it (and got a valid receipt/invoice from the seller) and two or three days later the box arrived directly from Amazon!

• by mikestew on 7/13/18, 8:59 PM

  I'm all set to jump on the Amazon hate bandwagon, and I'm tryin', I really am. So when I wanted window shadows for our RV, I thought I'd give the non-Amazon shop a shot. They had what I wanted, order page was tidy, item arrives in short order, and the shades are better quality than I expected. Happy customer!

  Until two days later and my bank calls, telling me my CC is compromised. Now, I can't say for sure it was the online vendor's fault. But in summary, I would hesitate to order from them again.

• by 40acres on 7/13/18, 10:05 PM

  Buying stuff on Amazon has just become second nature to me. I've gotten hard to find hot sauce, books, and laundry detergent despite the fact that I live literally across the street from a whole foods because of the convenience. My apartment complex recently installed an Amazon Hub as well. I've never really had an issue w/ the quality of goods or counterfeits and Prime is a great deal if only for the 2 day shipping and Prime Video.

• by S7012MY on 7/13/18, 10:33 PM

  In Romania shipping takes a lot and prices are higher, so I prefer ordering from Amazon Italy or Germany and I get the same price even though I also pay for shipping

• by beauzero on 7/14/18, 10:49 AM

  As someone who worked for a used book warehouse. Counterfeits are a huge problem. A large source of books for us was at a specific auction. We started getting so many counterfeit textbooks from that auction that we pretty much had to stop selling textbooks. For a specific textbook that we would get hundreds of, we would purchase one directly from the publisher and then compare.

• by Karunamon on 7/13/18, 8:16 PM

  How does this degree of influence factor in with their decisions to drop competitor's proucts? (ex. the Chromecast spat with Google)

• by lainga on 7/13/18, 8:18 PM

  I'm honestly surprised it isn't bigger. That's some serious king effect in the diagram.

• by blunte on 7/13/18, 8:29 PM

  Like many other behemoth US companies, Amazon has taken dubious shortcuts to its position as leader... Anti-employment wage suppression in its distribution and shipping, wilfully facilitating counterfeit product sales, regional tax breaks, and perhaps the biggest multiplier - the stock market and its ability to allow leverage upon leverage.

  We are seeing an excellent example of modern American capitalism.

• by ggg9990 on 7/14/18, 12:52 AM

  It’s absolutely nuts that Apple sells as much of their own product as Walmart.com sells of thousands of products.

• by pwaai on 7/13/18, 10:18 PM

  time for anti-trust suit??

• by paulddraper on 7/13/18, 8:37 PM

  On mobile I scroll to the bottom and then I can't get back to the article.

• by crb002 on 7/13/18, 9:45 PM

  "Free" shipping but the seller pays a 15% stocking fee.

• by tibiapejagala on 7/13/18, 9:05 PM

  Meanwhile in my country in Europe I have never heard about anyone buying anything from Amazon. Not the IT people, not the common folk, not teenagers, literally no one. Maybe someone bought a Kindle some time back, but I remember that people were literally reading tutorials how to buy it from amazon. The same people who had been buying things online for years.

  Amazon doesn't even have a polish website, as amazon.pl redirects to amazon.de They have multipe logistic centres in my country, employing thousands of people though! I guess it's for Germany so I can buy at amazon.de with international shipping, lol.

  We have Uber, McDonald's, iphones, credit cards, the internet, electricity! Come on! Almost everyone buys online here, either native polish e-commerce or directly from China.

  Also I think we can't buy any of Google hardware directly. I have given up on them though.

  So much for globalization.