Dive Brief:
- Amazon.com’s annual marketplace sales roundup revealed impressive-but-murky statistics on third-party sellers’ results, worldwide deliveries, and other indicators.
- Cyber Monday was clearly a winner for the online marketplace and its partners, with customers ordering 23 million items from its independent sellers.
- Amazon will release its official fourth-quarter results later this month.
Dive Insight:
Amazon’s annual marketplace sales roundup reveals that the holiday season was a good one for the company’s third-party sellers and its fulfillment services. For instance, consumers bought 23 million items from independent merchants affiliated with Amazon on Cyber Monday alone, up from 16 million in 2014.
Independent sellers using Amazon warehouses and logistics to store and ship their goods jumped 50% in 2015, and the company says it delivered 1 billion items from independent sellers worldwide during the year. However, Amazon’s notoriously hard-to-verify numbers didn’t include a total number of items sold by independent vendors.
Amazon wants to continue to attract outside merchants to its marketplace to help it expand its role as a clearinghouse for a comprehensive selection of goods without having to spend money sourcing them. In 2014, third-party vendors accounted for about 40% of Amazon’s volume, or almost $36 billion of $88.9 billion in sales.