Study on US consumer cross-shopping behavior: Half of Walmart's buyers are lost to Amazon

Market research firm Numerator recently released a new report analyzing cross-shopping behavior among the largest retailers in the United States, including Amazon, Walmart, Target and Costco, specifically consumers who use Amazon shopping to supplement in-store shopping within a day.

Key data findings include:

About three-quarters of consumers at major brick-and-mortar retailers also shop at Amazon, including 76% of Walmart consumers, 77% of Target consumers, and 75% of Costco consumers.

Walmart shoppers are the most likely to shop on Amazon within a day. More than half (53%) of Walmart shoppers also shop on Amazon within a day of shopping at Walmart, compared to 38% of Target and 38% of Costco shoppers.

Target has the greatest opportunity to capture same-day sales that are lost to Amazon. By preventing same-day events from leaking to Amazon, Target has the potential to capture 10.3% of incremental sales, followed by Walmart (+7.2%) and Costco (+4.7%).

Consumer goods make up the majority of sales lost to Amazon. The top four categories lost (home and garden, electronics, health and beauty, and apparel) account for more than half of all lost sales for each retailer.

Of all categories and retailers, Walmart had the highest percentage of lost sales in the home and garden category (18.5%). Costco had the highest percentage of lost sales in electronics (15.9% of lost sales), followed by Walmart (14.9%) and Target (14.2%).

Target was the only retailer with grocery appearing in the top five leaked categories (accounting for 5.2% of leaked sales).

Here’s the percentage of sales that large brick-and-mortar retailers are losing to Amazon, by category:

In addition to the shopping data analysis, Numerator also released a survey to understand the motivations behind consumers’ cross-shopping. Key survey data findings include:

Top Reasons to Buy on Amazon After Shopping In-Store

30% of Walmart & Amazon shoppers said they shopped on Amazon due to “lack of product availability” in Walmart stores, which is 6 percentage points higher than Target shoppers (24%).

Nearly a third of Target and Walmart shoppers cited “delivery convenience” as a reason they bought on Amazon, even if they were in the store that day.

22% of Walmart shoppers and 20% of Target shoppers cited "lower prices" as a reason for buying on Amazon.

Nearly a quarter (24%) of Target shoppers said they shopped on Amazon because they had searched for the product on Amazon before entering the store, seven percentage points higher than Walmart shoppers (17%).

Walmart could reduce churn by reducing out-of-stocks and improving the in-store shopping experience, while Target could focus on pricing and promotions.

When asked what Walmart or Target could do to get more of the items consumers buy, 39% of consumers said Walmart should focus on "product availability," 14 percentage points higher than the 25% who said the same about Target.

Offering "lower prices" was the top suggestion for Target shoppers (39%), compared to just 36% for Walmart shoppers.

"Improving the in-store experience" was the biggest gap between Walmart and Target shoppers (21 points), with nearly a third of Walmart shoppers (28%) making this request, compared to just 7% of Target shoppers.

Editor ✎ Xiao Zhu/

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