Selling on Amazon? Here’s New Data on the Average Shopper
Retail powerhouse Amazon ships to more than 100 countries and is one of the brands that U.S. consumers most trust, according to several polls, including the Harvard CAPs Harris Poll, the Morning Consult list, the Axios Harris Poll, and others.
Amazon made $574.8 billion in net sales last year with more than half of those sales, over 60%, coming from U.S. independent sellers — or small or medium-sized businesses. Independent sellers sold more than 4.1 billion products and made an average of $230,000 each in sales in 2022.
And who is buying all of those goods? New data from market research firm Numerator shows that Amazon shoppers are most likely to be Gen X (1965 to 1981), middle-income ($40,000 to $80,000), white/Caucasian, and female.
Numerator found that 99% of shoppers went back to Amazon for another purchase, and most go back many times — the average Amazon customer made 72 purchases last year.
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The Numerator data also highlights that 81% of U.S. households bought something on Amazon in 2023 and spent an average of $2,662 on the platform. Target, by comparison, was frequented by 77% of U.S. households about 23 times throughout the year. Shoppers spent more than double at Amazon than they did at Target, which had an annual buy rate of $1,103.
The shopper demographic was different at Target too, with Gen Z (>1996) or millennials (1982 to 1995) most likely to shop there.
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A separate report from JungleScout looked at the seller side of Amazon. According to the company’s State of the Seller survey, the top categories for sellers are home and kitchen (35%), beauty and personal care (26%), clothing, shoes and jewelry (20%), and toys and games (18%).
“You don’t have to be this big company to launch a product,” Alfred Mai, founder and CEO of ASM Games, told Amazon. “It doesn’t matter how small you are, we are able to compete with some of the biggest players.”
