Amazon has been a heavy hitting seller for sometime now. With each new year of the company’s existence, you see more and more of its presence throughout the selling world, more of its endeavors into new companies and industries, and more advancements in the digital platforms that we know and use daily. As we look at the Amazon company and how it has grown over the years, we can close this year looking at how this year has been for Amazon and what to expect in the year to come! Let’s dive in and see what Amazon has got in store.
Amazon 2017 Performance
As one could surmise, Amazon has online selling down to an exact science. Starting from operating solely within the book sales industry and working their way into all forms of online selling, Amazon has always been a front-runner in the world of e-commerce. In the 2016 calendar year, Amazon has managed to take in 38 cents of every online dollar spent, accounting for over a third of overall online earnings (Recode).
While 2016 was showing very strong figures favoring Amazon, the company has not reached it cap yet. The 2017 year, upon its conclusion, is expected to show even larger earnings for Amazon. Sales for the e-commerce powerhouse are projected to increase 32 percent to $196.8 billion in the US alone by the end of the year, which will amount to 43.5 percent of e-commerce sales, with closest competitor, EBay at only 6.8 percent of those dollars (Recode). Needless to say, 2017, in the end will have been a very prosperous year for Amazon.
Worth (Vertical Growth)
So 2017 is shaping up to be a good year for Amazon, but what can be expected for the year to come? The worth of the company is expected to reach new heights for e-commerce in the coming year. As it stands currently, Amazon’s total value with regards to its multiple endeavors in retail, advertising, and more sits at a staggering $995 billion (Business Insider). Amazon is teetering on the edge of a major milestone. By the end of the year 2018, Amazon is expected to be worth over $1 trillion, second to Apple, which will most likely break that barrier in the coming months (Business Insider).
Aside from overall worth of the company, share prices will also take a major turn in the time to come. Share prices reaching upwards of $2,000 a share are not out of the equation for this ever-growing company (Business Insider). Upward growth seems to be a continuous theme for the Amazon name.
Furthermore, Amazon is showing signs of having some rather large earnings in the year to come. NASDAQ stated that Amazon’s earnings during the 2017 year were down roughly 13.55 percent from the previous year. They went on, however, to project that the 2018 fiscal year for Amazon would boast a hearty increase in earnings for the company upwards of 92.56 percent, a sizeable hike for the company (NASDAQ)
Diversification and Corresponding Worth (Horizontal Growth)
Amazon, not only is growing in its vertical worth as a brand, but it is also undergoing a lot of horizontal growth, branching out into new acquisitions, endeavors, and industries. A little over half way into the 2017 fiscal year, Amazon made one large acquisition in particular. The online seller had purchased the Whole Foods company for $13.7 billion (Forbes). For a seller that operates primarily online, this could come as a surprising move. However, it was a strategic move on Amazon’s part. Concurrently to this move, Amazon had also been dabbling with online grocery deliveries fulfillment programs and experimental grocery project Amazon Go, so taking the popular Whole Foods brand and adding that to their data collection of shopper preferences as well as the earnings from the company itself (Business Insider).
What can be expected from 2018, however? Amazon banking is one potential prospect on the horizon (Bloomberg). This could mean big opportunities for Amazon to extend itself into yet another major industry, one that affects essentially all other industries. This could also aid in streamlining the processes for small business startups, as they could possibly be able to address all prefatory needs in one place, from initial loans all the way up to supplemental marketplace services all through Amazon.
Conclusion
Amazon, since its creation in 1994, has constantly found new ways to push itself into the forefront of the seller spectrum, each year gaining more and more momentum and more and more growth as a product. As aforementioned, there are a lot of big potential prospects for Amazon in the year to come, so let’s see if Amazon makes good on those measures forward. To learn more about Amazon, their web services, or even simply starting up an online selling platform for your business online, contact Rave Retailer