How Amazon Won Shopping

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I don’t want to let a milestone pass without blaring that THIS IS A BIG MOMENT.

Amazon most likely passed Walmart recently as the biggest retail seller outside China, as my colleagues Karen Weise and Michael Corkery wrote on Tuesday. Shoppers around the world — but mostly in the United States, which remains Amazon’s biggest market by far — now buy more than $600 billion worth of stuff on Amazon each year. Yeah, that’s a lot. That’s about what Americans spent at restaurants and bars last year.

Some of you reading this might be surprised that Amazon wasn’t already selling more than Walmart. Nope. Remember that people in most countries, including the United States, still do the vast majority of their shopping in stores. That makes it all the more remarkable that Amazon has gotten so big. (Side note: The total value of yearly purchases made on Alibaba, China’s e-commerce giant, is roughly double those on Amazon. That’s really a lot.)

What’s most notable is how Amazon got to this point. Not unlike America’s retail rulers of prior eras, Sears and Walmart, Amazon rose to power because it nailed convenience, the force of habit and a system to move merchandise from place to place. Amazon isn’t always the best place to shop, but it is winning by mastering everything but the shopping.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon was on track to surpass Walmart as America’s retail leader. But changes in our shopping habits turbocharged Amazon’s sales even more than Walmart’s. (Read more from my colleagues on Amazon’s milestone.)

As regular On Tech readers know, I am a teeny bit obsessed with Amazon. And among my fixations is this question: How can Amazon make a gazillion dollars and still feel like a clunky shopping website from the 1990s?