It’s not even Halloween yet, and retailers are talking about the holiday season.
Amazon released its hot toy list today to “commence the holiday cheer.” The list features more than a thousand products, including Star Wars gear and dinosaur stuff, with interest generated by Jurassic World and Disney’s new Good Dinosaur flick, and STEM-related toys.
The massive online retailer has a lot to be cheerful about already — analysts are predicting that Amazon will dominate this year’s holiday sales.
According to this Fierce Retail report from late September, Amazon had already priced its consumer electronics below major competitors, including Walmart, Best Buy, Jet and Target. At that time, Walmart was listing the highest prices.
Additionally, they found that “Best Buy, Jet, Target and Walmart all significantly lagged behind Amazon in product assortments, although Walmart had the closest match with 32.9 percent product overlap with Amazon.”
Amazon’s large selection, discounted pricing and easy, fast delivery for Prime customers is going to be tough to beat. In this USA Today report, “How Amazon is Eating Walmart’s Lunch,” they are predicting a bleaker forecast for the once-mighty American brick-and-mortar retailer.
“Shares of Walmart fell 10% to $60.03 on the news that growth the next three years would be an anemic 3% to 4% and profit would drop up to 12% in fiscal 2017,” wrote USA Today. “Shares of Walmart are now down a crushing 30% this year. Investors have seen $21.5 billion in market value vanish just today and $83 billion this year.”
Conversely, USA Today reports that “Shares of Amazon have been one of the top performers this year – soaring 75.7%.”
We reported on Amazon’s second quarter earnings report in July, in which the company exceeded Wall Street’s expectations with $23.18 billion in revenue and a profit of $92 million, or 19 cents a share.
That earnings jump boosted Jeff Bezos to be the world’s fifth-richest man — and made Amazon worth more than Walmart with a market capitalization of around $250 billion.
Amazon’s third quarter earnings will be released next week.
Walmart still dominates when it comes to revenue though. USA Today adds that “Walmart will still be more than four times bigger than Amazon in terms of revenue. Revenue at Walmart is expected to hit $482.2 billion in fiscal 2015 — while Amazon’s is seen to be $105.80 billion.”
If Amazon keeps on moving those Disney toys, though, that revenue number may not be true for too much longer. This holiday season will be one to watch.
But please, get your Halloween on first.
