10/10/2017
JD.com and Alibaba Outperform Amazon in Worldwide Global Retailer Growth
New research released today - 10th October 2017, is showing a small decline in Amazon`s dominance in the world retailer market. Whilst Amazon is still the major online retailer with a revenue growth of £23.5 billion, JD.com and Alibaba seem to be lessening the gap having had a better growth in terms of percentage.
The research, released by eMarketer, uses data collected from OC&C Strategy Consultants who are based in the UK, shows that the three retail giants together experienced a growth rate of 30%, compared to the the average of 4.3% of other worldwide retailers.
Ranking
The research enabled a ranking of the top 10 worldwide retailers to be made in terms of increase in sales, and ranked Amazon as top, with the Chinese JD.com coming in 2nd (in terms of revenue growth) at £8.0 billion - but a 41% growth, and Alibaba - the Chinese e-commerce retailers coming in at 10th with £2.9 billion, but with a growth of 33%.
Chinese Retail Giants
Both JD.com and Alibaba are based in China and are a testament to the ever-increasing Chinese presence in online retailing. Both of the Chinese retailers are making steps to strengthen their hands, with both investing in bricks and mortar premises to continue to grow in the Chinese market.
JD.com are opening branded retail stores across China, have invested in new offline retail experience technology, and have made a partnership deal with luxury site - FarFetch.
Alibaba have started to build their own mall, and increased its number of Hema supermarkets, as well as increased the amount that they have invested further afield - such as in Lazada - an e-commerce company based in Singapore, and Tokopedia - an Indonesian e-commerce platform.
Amazon have also been trying to strengthen their influence in Asia - for example, since they launched Prime Now in Singapore last July.
For now, the focus for these worldwide online - and increasingly offline - retail leaders must be Singles Day (11th November), Black Friday and Cyber Monday next month, as well as the general build up to Christmas.
It appears that, from this research, the theories of an ever-increasing influence of Chinese and Asian business on the market are very real. The percentage growth made by both JD.com and Alibaba is very significant compared to other big worldwide retailers such as The Home Depot, Schwarz/Lidl, Lowes and Aldi - who also all featured in the top 10.