Things have been going well on that score lately. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s merchandise sales doubled over the last two years — to nearly $40 billion. But that number really just scratches the surface. Online retailing has a bright future ahead, and Amazon can count on at least three major tailwinds as it tries to keep its growth chugging along.
Strong merchandise sales
First, there’s the rush to online shopping. Actually, it’s more like a stampede now. Gone are the days when people thought twice about using a credit card on the Internet. Instead we’ve seen e-commerce adoption rates spike, with sales up 15% in the last year. Online spending even cracked into the double digits as a percentage of all shopping recently. In the fourth quarter of 2012, e-commerce accounted for $1 out of every $10 of retail spending in the U.S.
As the leading online seller, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is a major beneficiary of that shift in retailing trends. The company now boasts more than 200 million active customer accounts, up from 160 million in 2011. Many of those 40 million new Amazon shoppers used to buy exclusively from places like Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) and Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT). But lately, while they still roam the aisles at those retailers, many consumers are opting to make their purchases from Amazon.com. And the e-tailer has been selling plenty of additional products to all those newly converted customers. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s product sales were up 32% in the holiday quarter, lapping the 46% growth from the year before. With online retail still just a tiny portion of overall global retailing, the company has a long runway ahead of it.
However, it looks like sales taxes are coming to online shopping. And that will hurt the pricing advantage enjoyed by Internet-only retailers like Amazon. But that change is actually good news for Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s product sales growth because it allows the company to build out new warehouses. Until just over a year ago the company operated with an awkwardly stretched infrastructure in the United States. Amazon benefited by keeping its physical locations as sparse as possible so that it could offer products free from state sales taxes. But that strategy has run its course. State governments are winning the battle against online sellers, and Amazon has already started collecting taxes in several more states. The rest of the country will only be a matter of time.
Amazon Prime
Second, Amazon can look to its Prime members for increasing sales growth. While the company doesn’t share member numbers, independent estimates peg subscribers at 10 million — and rising fast. These customers pay Amazon $79 a year for unlimited two-day shipping on most products.
Taking a page from Costco Wholesale Corporation (NASDAQ:COST)‘s successful retail model, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) engineered its Prime service to promote deep levels of customer engagement while padding the company’s bottom line. Once shoppers are in, they’re hooked. As members, they tend to look to Amazon to fill a wider range of product needs, from batteries to baby clothes. And Prime members are heavy users, too. They spend on average $1,224 per year on the site, or double what non-Prime customers spend. Amazon’s main challenge is to keep these members happy — and to attract new ones — mostly by boosting the number of products it offers with the addictive bonus of unlimited free, and fast, shipping.
Distribution and new business
Which brings us to the third factor driving Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)‘s sales growth: new warehouses, services, and AWS.
