Study: Amazon prices can be beat

New York – Amazon.com provides a customer value proposition of convenience and the lowest prices. According to new analysis from managed analytics provider Ugam, competitors at least have a chance to beat Amazon on prices of some items.



Ugam conducted assortment intelligence analysis of two key sporting goods categories, identifying gaps in Amazon’s merchandising assortment and confirming that the retail giant doesn’t always have the lowest price on the most sought-after products.



To accurately analyze the assortment and pricing in these retail categories, Ugam focused on synthesizing a list of trending baseball bats and women’s running shoes via its big data analytics capability and proprietary algorithm for synthesizing consumer demand data. Ugam then used the list of key trending products to compare the assortments and pricing for several competitive online retailers, including Amazon.com.



Of the top 40 baseball bats, Amazon competed for sales against other retailers for 29 of them. Of those, Amazon had the lowest price (or tied for it) only 51% of the time (15 of 26). Of the top 50 running shoes, Amazon competed for sales on 21 of them, offering the lowest price (or tied for it) only 38% of the time (eight of 21).



In addition, Amazon had the largest assortments of both bats (729 SKUs) and women’s running shoes (723 SKUs). But, Amazon’s assortment was missing seven of the top 40 trending bats (17.5%) and 26 of the top 50 women’s running shoes (52%).



Also, 40% of Amazon’s running shoe assortment is not top brands, a higher percentage than any other retailer. Most of Amazon’s competitors had larger assortments of the most expensive bats and running shoes. Amazon had the largest assortments of the least expensive running shoes (those priced $75 or less) and least expensive bats (those less than $50) – almost twice as many as their nearest competitor in either category.



“Comprehensive assortment analysis is an absolute necessity in today’s information transparent and ultra-competitive retail industry,” said Greg Girard, IDC program director, merchandise strategies. “Only by collecting the right product intelligence data and analyzing it for opportunities can retailers make fact-based decisions that create a competitive advantage.”