From Amazon’s Prime membership numbers to its entry into the grocery space to its retail “dominance,” Moody’s analysts led by Charles O’Shea tackled some widespread assumptions about the e-commerce giant’s place in the world in a recent report emailed to Retail Dive. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Analysts with the bond rating agency noted that, though Amazon dominates online sales, those sales account for just 10% of the industry as a whole. As for its recent acquisition of Whole Foods, the analysts wrote, “We believe it’s a big stretch to say — as many in the market have been doing — that Amazon will dominate food retail, and some have said this will happen within two years.” They pointed out that Amazon, even now with Whole Foods in the fold, controls only a $20 billion piece of an $800 billion market for food sales in the U.S.
O’Shea and his fellow analysts also called into question oft-cited estimates of Amazon’s Prime membership at 85 million, which they call “seriously overstated,” “highly improbable” and made “in the absence of any real guidance from the company itself.” Moody’s analysts, based on an evaluation of demographic data, think the figure for Prime members is closer to 50 million, well below Costco’s total of 86.7 million members.
PenneyVanderbilt 