Can retail rivals beat Amazon without having lower prices over the holidays?
Photo: Amazon
A new research study is supporting the conclusions of others that have preceded it. When it comes to the lowest prices online, Amazon.com is the winner more often than not.
The new study from Profitero, which compared prices on 100,000 products from 16 retailers from April through June this year, found that Amazon had the lowest prices on 11 of 15 product categories.
Amazon’s prices, on average, were 13 percent lower than its rivals overall in the categories studied. Walmart.com’s prices were 2.3 percent higher, Jet.com’s were 4.2 percent higher and Target.com charged nearly 12 percent more than what Amazon charged.
There were instances, however, when Amazon didn’t have the lowest price. Chewy.com’s prices for pet supplies were 2.3 percent cheaper than Amazon’s. Jet.com had lower prices in beauty (.4 percent) and music/CDs (2.6 percent). Walmart was priced slightly lower on home furniture (.7 percent) and baby categories (.3 percent) than its rival.
Amazon’s price advantage was most stark in comparison to specialty retailers. In a head-to-head with Best Buy, Amazon was 13.3 percent less expensive on appliances and 15.2 percent cheaper on consumer electronics. It was also substantially cheaper on sporting goods (18.4 percent) than Dick’s Sporting Goods and nearly 25 percent cheaper on furniture than Wayfair.
According to research from Valassis, Amazon used special Prime Day pricing in July to grab early purchases for the Christmas season. Forty percent of U.S. consumers completed at least some of their Christmas shopping during Prime Day.
The e-tail giant recently announced that it would offer free shipping on all orders, even without an Amazon Prime subscription, to provide a price plus convenience incentive for shoppers during the holiday season.