Who Knew? Amazon Shoppers Are Walmart Moms

Price. And my reading of the study is not that WM was used for showrooming. It only says 25% of Amazon shoppers visited a Walmart in January.

Dr. Stephen Needel, Managing Partner, Advanced Simulations

Walmart is the largest brick and mortar retailer in America. Amazon is the largest online retailer. It makes sense that their shoppers would overlap. This fact is not indicative of anything. Consumers shop offline and online.

Max Goldberg, Founding Partner, The Radical Clarity Group

Given the enormous size of Walmart and its growing footprint in the food business, it's not surprising to find overlap between its shoppers and Amazon customers. If you surveyed other mass market retailers (e-commerce and bricks-and-mortar) you would probably find the same thing.

Beyond the issue of Walmart's sheer scale, the two companies have a lot in common: A reputation for low prices, and a variety of merchandise content supported by logistics expertise. It will be interesting to see the battle between these two companies play out as they both move further toward true "omnichannel" retailing.

Dick Seesel, Principal, Retailing In Focus LLC

Having access to information will always be an issue for online vs. retail shopping. If I were Walmart, I would take this as yet another confirmation as my dominance as a retailer being able to service the most savvy online shoppers that are more than likely looking for each and every way to score deals. If I were Amazon, I'd start working on my food and grocery model.

Zel Bianco, President, founder and CEO, Interactive Edge

I don't think the percent overlap numbers do much more than state the obvious.

The more interesting results in the study are the indexes. These may provide an alert to some of the retailers concerned, though I would hope most know this and are acting upon it.

The study is certainly a great application of "big data." It hints at some of the powerful opportunities in the use of geo-location data for retailers, even brands.

Matthew Keylock, Senior Vice President, New Business Development and Partnerships, dunnhumbyUSA

First of all, let's back up a minute.

There is probably some statistically significant relationship between Walmart shoppers and left handed vegetarians, one-eyed snake handlers and people with purple blender fetishes. The same is true of Amazon.

That's what happens when a company has such dominant market share. Its base is so big it tends to intersect any number of other demographic, psychographic, etc. cohorts.

When two companies have large and diverse customer bases it would only be surprising if they didn't intersect.

And, as the article points out the two companies have a couple of value propositions—selection and price—in common.

So, I'd say one should be careful before leaping to any conclusions other than the obvious—that two retailers of this scale are likely to share a significant base of customers.

Ryan Mathews, Founder, ceo, Black Monk Consulting

Price, or at least perception of low price, is a major reason for the overlap between Walmart and Amazon.com consumers. However, it is siginificant that the overlap is only 25.2% of Amazon consumers. 75% of Amazon consumers are from other retailers. That indicates that Amazon is a major alternative for consumers who regularly shop at a number of retailers. A combination of price and convenience may be a larger attraction for consumers.

Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D., President, Global Collaborations, Inc.

I see this as a great reminder to all retailers that today's customer is multi-channel, multi-retailer, multi-device, and multi anything else. You have to keep winning the customer on every visit, and if you don't they'll just shift their shopping to the other retailers they do business with.

Doug Fleener, President and Managing Partner, Dynamic Experiences Group

It means that Amazon and Walmart are the two most shopped places in the USA, so it makes sense to me that this is happening. I wish it was my place, but hey it's all good. I'll take Amazon any day for their service level, and good value.

Tony Orlando, Owner, Tony O's Supermarket & Catering

Both Walmart and Amazon attract shoppers interested in having a wide variety of products to choose from at a low price. It's that simple.

John Karolefski, Editor in Chief, CPGmatters.com

Correlation and causality are two different thing. For instance, there is a high correlation between drowning deaths and ice cream sales. However, since there is not a big push to reduce the amount of ice cream people eat, I think it is safe to say that people do not interpret ice cream as the cause of drowning deaths. By the same token, it is a leap to take an overlap statistic and draw actionable conclusions. Perhaps 25% of the Placed sample (regardless of Amazon purchases) goes to Walmart and 11% go to Target. This would mean that Amazon shoppers look pretty much like everyone else.

Placed has some interesting data that could be valuable for many retailers. I would like to see them take the analysis of that data to the next level.

Kurt Seemar, President, Analytic Marketing Innovations

The piece says it all—selection and price.

Lisa Bradner, Chief Strategy Officer, Geomentum/Shopper Sciences

Walmart has made a major push in the e-commerce area. Earlier this week, in fact, a report by Internet Retailer quoted Neil Ashe, president and CEO of Walmart's e-commerce efforts, as saying the company was running ahead of plan to reach $9 billion in global online sales this year. Maybe, it's Amazon that needs to look out.

George Anderson, Editor-in-Chief/Associate Publisher, RetailWire LLC

Not surprising that there is overlap given the scale of both Amazon and Walmart. Plus, they both place emphasis on price and selection. And, the world is increasingly becoming a place where folks shop in bricks and with clicks. Not sure that I would draw any significant conclusions.

Brian Numainville, Principal, The Retail Feedback Group

Price. And huge assortment, of course.

Also, both are innocuous non-experiences where your main goal is to just cross things off your list for as low a cost as possible, not necessarily to explore and discover. In other words: both brands are prone to target shoppers.

Lee Peterson, EVP Creative Services, WD Partners

Product, price, selection and customer service!! Amazon will continue to poach buyers, and brick and mortar retailers will continue to lose them so long as they believe that consumers prefer to drive to the store, get poor treatment, bad customer service, and wait in long lines to encounter disgruntled employees. All of this goes away in the well-run online environment...learn, learn, learn...

Kai Clarke, President, Miraclebeam Products, Inc.

People are busy and creatures of habit. As other commenters have noted, both retailers have huge market share, and people who are used to shopping there will continue shopping there. They know exactly what they're going to find, they know it will be affordable, and they know how to maximize their time.

'gafpromise'

Although they are clearly very different retailers in terms of their history and market positioning, one thing that is quite consistent between the two is that they carry such a large assortment of general merchandise. When you have two retailers with such large assortments, it seems somewhat natural that there would be a high correlation in the number of shoppers between the two. In addition, both strive to be low-price leaders, which would imply that at least in with respect to that one key purchasing factor, they are both attracting shoppers with similar interests.

Alexander Rink, CEO, 360pi

Price: Walmart tries to provide the lowest price every day in the brick and mortar world. Amazon tries to provide the lowest price online. Customers looking for the lowest retail price will naturally shop both.

Size: Walmart is the largest retailer, Amazon is...the "Walmart of the web." If they are the biggest, they have the most customers. Shoppers for both will naturally overlap.

This headline belongs on MrObvious.com

'jawbrain'

I have to think @WalmartLabs is behind this overlap. The high level combination of social, analytics and retail that they are rumored to be deploying, and developing, is spot on for the mom demographic.

Karen S. Herman, Founder & Design Director, Gustie Creative LLC