Amazon’s leadership of the US retail ecommerce market continues, with above-average growth rates and increased penetration across product categories. Alongside eMarketer’s newly released report on Amazon Prime Day 2018, we have also recently published several US Amazon-related forecasts covering the following: retail ecommerce sales, direct vs. marketplace sales, retail ecommerce sales by product category, Amazon Prime users and households, and Amazon smart speaker users.

Highlights from the detailed forecasts include:

• Total US Amazon retail ecommerce sales (gross merchandise value) are expected to hit $258.22 billion in 2018, an increase of 29% from the previous year—far exceeding total US retail ecommerce’s growth of 16%. Amazon continues to set the pace for US retail ecommerce and will account for more than 80% of the overall market’s expected growth this year.
• Amazon marketplace sales will make up 68% of the company’s retail ecommerce sales in 2018, and that figure will surpass 70% by 2019. Third-party sellers continue to gain importance on the platform, with marketplace sales expected to grow 35.6% in 2018, about twice the rate of Amazon direct sales (17.5%).
• Amazon boasts double-digit US retail ecommerce market share across every product category, ranging from 16% in auto and parts to 80% in books/music/video. The fastest-growing categories for Amazon in 2018 will be food and beverage (up 40.1%), apparel and accessories (38.2%), and health, personal care and beauty (37.8%).
• Amazon Prime is projected to reach 58.7 million households and 109.5 million users in the US in 2018, representing increases of 12.5% from the prior year. By the end of 2019, more than half of US internet users will be Prime users.