Amazon And eBay Same Store Sales Growing Faster Than Overall Ecommerce

ChannelAdvisor’s August report on Same Store Sales (SSS) shows that, despite slight dips from July, Amazon and eBay continue to show stronger growth than the ecommerce market as a whole. Amazon SSS rose 24 percent in August while eBay SSS increased by 19 percent, compared to 16 percent growth for overall ecommerce (excluding travel) in Q2 as reported by comScore.

Amazon’s SSS growth rate has declined steadily since the fall of 2012 when it hit 43.7 percent in November as shown in the chart below: Source: ChannelAdvisor

Yet analysts remain positive, focusing on the ecommerce giant’s ability to outpace the general market. Jefferies Equity Research issued the following statement in response to the ChannelAdvisor report:

As in prior periods, we believe these numbers clearly support our thesis that Amazon continues growing roughly 2x faster than overall eCommerce and 7-8x faster than overall retail (up +3.5% Y/Y in August and +3.9% Y/Y in July for the 12 US chains still reporting monthly results).

eBay Demonstrates Strong Growth

It appears eBay’s new search engine Cassini, rolled out in North America in July, is having a positive impact on that marketplace’s growth. ChannelAdvisor reports eBay auctions were up 7.8 percent year-over-year, representing the positive increase in that area since the company began tracking the data in early 2011.

ChannelAdvisor found the growth in auctions did not come from a cannibalization from Fixed-Price (FP) sales, where eBay remains most focused. The company summarized the increase this way:

What seems to be happening is a change in the search behavior.  Perhaps Cassini is helping auctions surface that were once passed over due to un-indexed terms in the descriptions or eBay has tweaked the ‘share’ of auctions/fp in Cassini/BestMatch to some degree.  What leads us to vote on the first (Cassini surfacing listings) is the fact that FP did not decline which would have indicated a bit of cannibalization.  The incrementality makes us believe that there is an underlying improvement in conversion rates.

eBay’s Fixed-Price sales showed strong growth, rising 20.2 percent year-over-year.

The ChannelAdvisor Same Store Sales data is derived from the software company’s global customer base of thousands of online retailers, hundreds of ecommerce channels and billions of dollars in Gross Merchandise Value.

Search and Comparison Shopping Engine channels both lagged behind ecommerce as a whole. Read more on Search Engine Land: Report: Google Product Listing Ads Drive CSE Channel Growth, Cannibalize Text Ad Clicks