Did you know about these Amazon Competitors?

February 3, 2023
Certainly, as a small business owner, you’ve probably thought to yourself (at least once), “How the heck can I compete with Amazon?” and well, it’s for good reason since if you’re an online retailer, or even if you own physical stores serving a niche, there’s a decent chance that Amazon has a chunk of your market share.
However, even if you cannot believe it, Amazon isn’t completely untouchable. In fact, there are a lot of businesses that we consider as direct Amazon competitors in some way and still enjoy huge profits. That’s why today we’ll take a look at 5 of Amazon’s top competitors in several areas, explaining what exactly makes them successful. Without further ado, these are the main competitors of the big company.
Top 4 Amazon Competitors
Before starting, keep in mind that this Amazon competitors’ analysis has a healthy mix of online-only business models and offline/online offerings. Each of them has unique advantages that position them as Amazon competitors for online sales.
eBay
Founded in 1995, San Jose, California, this massive ecommerce platform actually directly competes with Amazon. Furthermore, although eBay’s revenue has steadily fallen in recent years, in 2022 it still totaled a whopping $9.89 billion.
In this site, sellers list products for sale and buyers find them in the marketplace. Moreover, eBay sellers also offer products similar to those offered by sellers on Amazon and if you’re wondering what is the difference between them, basically, on eBay sellers can auction products or have a fixed rate while Amazon doesn’t offer auction sales.
Walmart
Regarding the big discount department store concept, another great example of an Amazon competitor is Walmart. Founded in 1962 by Sam Walton in Rogers, Arkansas, this is one of the oldest companies on this list.
As you see, Amazon and Walmart are two of the main retailers in the US and have always been in competition. Thus, Walmart dominates the physical space, but Amazon leads online.
On the other hand, despite the fact that Walmart has been around for 30 years, both are now fighting for the same customers to the point that the brands compete on everything from innovation to digital growth, logistics, and sustainability. Walmart saw a revenue of $573 billion in 2022, actually surpassing Amazon, which generated $502 billion in revenue.
Alibaba Group
Considered as the counterpart of Amazon (a giant in the U.S) but in China. Alibaba Group was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, a website whose main retail subsidiaries are AliExpress, Taobao, and Tmall.
Here, each subsidiary competes against Amazon in different ways. Taobao, a B2C (business to consumer) operation, for example, competes with Amazon on selling clothes, accessories, gadgets, and computer hardware at low prices.
Currently, Alibaba is one of the biggest competitors to Amazon Web Services, with cloud computing bringing in a revenue of $11.7 billion in 2022 and to top it all off, collectively, the Alibaba Group saw revenue of approximately $134 billion in 2021 and $131 billion in revenue for 12 months ending September 30, 2022.
Netflix
Well, but if you thought Amazon was just a physical products retailer, you were wrong. Actually, the company has their own streaming site and in that case we have to turn to Netflix, the biggest competitor of Amazon Prime Video.
This video-on-demand service started in 1997 when founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph mailed themselves a DVD in Scotts Valley, California. And nowadays it’s widely considered one of the most popular subscription services in the world. While many rising competitors in the video streaming space have cut into its US market share, it still retains a hefty 20%.