Amazon’s Staggering Growth in CE

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Amazon boxes

Amazon captured, devoured, stole or won 90 percent of all the growth in consumer electronics sales last year, according to a Deutsche Bank research note heavily citing this year’s TWICE Top 100 Consumer Electronics Retailers Report.

The mega retailer was responsible for capturing almost all of the $5.6 billion by which US consumer electronics sales increased in 2015.

Amazon also surpassed Walmart in the TWICE  report as the number two retailer in consumer electronics, and is fast catching up to Best Buy, the current market leader.

Walker Sands Future of Retail 2016
Source: Walker Sands Future of Retail 2016

There has been a lot of news lately on the growth of Amazon and online sales in general.  A recent Walker Sands study found that 98 percent of respondents had bought something from Amazon in the past year.  The next closest single retail competitor was eBay at 61 percent.

Additionally out of all consumer goods, electronics is the most-shopped for category online. Walker Sands also found that more consumers report shopping online for electronics in the past year than for any other category, even books.

While at CE Week in NY on Wednesday, we caught up with Pioneer Electronics’ Ted Cardenas and asked him about Amazon’s role in car audio.

He chose to comment on ecommerce in general and pointed to the dilemma retailers face regarding how to handle walk-in customers who buy car audio online and look for installation service from a specialist.  Dealers are now split between those who will install products bought online and and those who refuse to.

“I think in the next few years, we’ll see which path it will go,” Cardenas said, adding,”I think it’s too early to tell what the industry should do.  Retailers are either embracing ecommerce, saying, ‘I’m the installation specialist, come to me for services,’ versus those that absolutely reject ecommerce and say ‘If you don’t buy it from me  I’m not touching the product.’  Retailers are on one side or the other.  I think it’s too early to tell which is the correct path. But ecommerce is not going away.”

Source: Quartz, Barron’s, TWICE

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3 Comments

  1. I sell pioneer at msrp to the top 5% people in the world. for now. I do see problems with profit pressure in the future. the way that sales are going we may end up doing 3-4 installs for online purchases a day in the near future. $1000 labor a day beats zero.

    I also see the day when all wholesale distribution will be taken over by amazon.

  2. How much of amazons sales are are from them selling inventory they actually bought and how much of the sales are from fullfillment orders and how much are from people selling on amazon and shupping directly to customers??

    .Is this just how much sales being generated through amazon??

    It would be funny if some retailer sold something cheap on amazon then had someone bring it into their store for installation and telling them they don’t install anything bought online.

  3. I guess that’s why we can’t sell Pioneer – Amazon is within $5 of our distributor price on most units…

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