Who Knew? Amazon Shoppers Are Walmart Moms

New research from the locations analytics firm Placed shows that the brick and mortar store where the greatest percentage of Amazon.com customers shop is Walmart.

In fact, 25.2 percent of Amazon customers shop at Walmart. Interestingly, women who shop on Amazon are 37 percent more likely to shop at Walmart than men. Perhaps this should not be surprising since customers of both Amazon and Walmart are both driven by selection and price.

The chain where Amazon shoppers go second most often is Target (10.7 percent). Here, the gender imbalance is even greater with female Amazon shoppers 60.5 percent more likely to shop at Target than males.

Interestingly, Amazon Price Check app users were four percent less likely to visit Walmart than the average for brick and mortar stores.

Other stores, however, have much more to be concerned about when it comes to showrooming.

walmart customers freezer aisle

T.J. Maxx was the store most visited by Price Check users (+53 percent) followed by Costco (49 percent), Office Depot (33 percent), AT&T Wireless (31 percent), Toys "R" Us (29 percent), Macy’s (29 percent), Best Buy (28 percent), PetSmart (25 percent), RadioShack (22 percent), Bed Bath & Beyond (22 percent), Target (19 percent) and GameStop (19 percent).

"All the attention to date has been on Target and Best Buy as the early victims of showrooming, but significantly more retailers are at risk," said David Shim, founder and CEO at Placed, in a statement. "Retailers need to know that it’s not a question of if or when showrooming will impact their business, as an aisle to Amazon is already in their store."

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

Why do you think there is such an overlap between Amazon.com and Walmart shoppers? What does this mean for Amazon.com and Walmart respectively?

Poll

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Dr. Stephen Needel
Dr. Stephen Needel
11 years ago

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.

Max Goldberg
Max Goldberg
11 years ago

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.

Dick Seesel
Dick Seesel
11 years ago

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.

Zel Bianco
Zel Bianco
11 years ago

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.

Matthew Keylock
Matthew Keylock
11 years ago

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.

Ryan Mathews
Ryan Mathews
11 years ago

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.

Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D.
Camille P. Schuster, Ph.D.
11 years ago

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.

Doug Fleener
Doug Fleener
11 years ago

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.

Tony Orlando
Tony Orlando
11 years ago

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.

John Karolefski
John Karolefski
11 years ago

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.

Kurt Seemar
Kurt Seemar
11 years ago

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.

Lisa Bradner
Lisa Bradner
11 years ago

The piece says it all—selection and price.

George Anderson
George Anderson
11 years ago

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.

Brian Numainville
Brian Numainville
11 years ago

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.

Lee Peterson
Lee Peterson
11 years ago

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.

Kai Clarke
Kai Clarke
11 years ago

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…

Giacinta Shidler
Giacinta Shidler
11 years ago

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.

Alexander Rink
Alexander Rink
11 years ago

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.

Jason Williams
Jason Williams
11 years ago

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

Karen S. Herman
Karen S. Herman
11 years ago

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.