Amazon, the online retailing behemoth is now embarked on capturing the wallet share across a slew of categories including grocery items, to beauty products to luxury merchandise. In fact, Amazon has announced that it had captured around 44% of all American e-commerce sales last year, citing a study report from One Click Retail, chainstoreage.com said. What is more, the online major has also accounted for 4% of America's total retail sales for the year - an estimated $200 billion, quoting from the study titled: "Amazon Year in Review: The Five Biggest Trends of 2017", the report pointed out.Product BlitzThe range of products that witnessed humongous sales last year on Amazon included consumer electronics, which logged in excess of $8 billion, noted the report. Similarly, Amazon's home and kitchen and publishing divisions came next with $5.5 billion and $5 billion in sales respectively. Then came the sports and outdoors segment in the fourth position with $4billion in sales.Fast moving productsIn the fast moving product categories of Amazon, luxury beauty is in the lead with 47% year over year growth logging sale of $400 million. Besides that, the pantry items witnessed 38% growth with $500 million in sales. In the grocery and furniture area, each logged 33% year over year growth with the sales revenue of $1.5 billion respectively.
Success StrategiesThe success of Amazon can be attributed to various steps it had taken in order to achieve their stated objective. The online major, without much brouhaha, was building its automated marketing system in 2016, which was followed by the strategic system upgrades last year. These steps paid off and Amazon now has a state of the art search platform, adding a wide spectrum of keywords for mobile phones, desktop computers and helping the various app users to make their lives easier. Furthermore, Amazon has also integrated with email marketing and vendor-powered coupons, which also contributed to its overall growth.Clear LeadNow, it has become a reality that over 50% of product searches begin on Amazon. Also the reality is that only Amazon has the wherewithal in converting click-through to actual sales. What with all these added benefits along with some fabulous ROI metrics in place, several leading brands commenced taking their search budgets out of the traditional Google and Facebook and instead investing on Amazon, the study revealed.ConsumablesLast year also witnessed the exponential sale of consumables registering annual growth of 35%, thanks to the takeover of Amazon's Whole Foods. In fact, it is now Amazon's second largest private brand: 365 Everyday Value — a category with over $10 million in estimated 2017 sales.Spencer Millerberg, CEO, One Click Retail says, “Ultimately, success – for both Amazon itself and for brands that sell through the platform – comes down to knowing your audience. Therefore, it is clear that Amazon catered to the right crowd in 2017 and the brands that correctly understood who their products were for – and who they were most useful to – are the ones that had a very good year.”