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Target and Walmart Improve Competitive Position Against Amazon, Says Annual Boomerang Commerce Report on Holiday Pricing and Assortment of Toys and Games
[November 22, 2017]

Target and Walmart Improve Competitive Position Against Amazon, Says Annual Boomerang Commerce Report on Holiday Pricing and Assortment of Toys and Games


Boomerang Commerce, the leading Retail Performance Management solution, today releases its annual "Boomerang Insights: Toys Category" report comparing top retailers' pricing, promotion and assortment of this holiday season's popular toys and games.

Key findings across data from Amazon, Walmart, Jet.com, Target (News - Alert), and Toys"R"Us show:

  • Amazon remains unchallenged as the everything store: Amazon has over 6 million items in its Toys & Games category alone. For comparison, Target offers just over 16,000 items, and Walmart has fewer than a million in the same category. For these and other items, Amazon utilizes a pricing strategy that optimizes based on popularity, competitively pricing items that will most likely influence a customer's perception of value.
  • Walmart emerges as a top contender: Walmart maintains the U.S. retail world's second-broadest assortment. In one analysis of a basket of popular toy items, Walmart had a 75-percent product overlap with Amazon, whereas Target had a 30-percent overlap with Amazon, and Toys"R"Us had a 29-percent product overlap.
  • Target reverses YOY pricing challenges to offer most competitive toy pricing: In Boomerang's 2015 and 2016 reports, Target lagged in competitive pricing. This year, the retailer has risen to become the most competitive in termsof pricing for this sample of toys. For the basket of popular items on Amazon, Target was only 5 percent more expensive than Amazon, whereas Jet was 8 percent more expensive, and Toys"R"Us and Walmart were 13 percent more expensive.
  • Supply chain issues vex Jet, Walmart and Toys"R"Us: Although Walmart and Jet had the greatest overlap with the sample of Amazon's products, Walmart was out of stock on 16 percent of the most popular items, and Jet was out of stock on 20 percent at the time of our analysis. This was also the case at Toys"R"Us where 22 percent of the most popular matched items were out of stock.
  • Consumers win the day: The real winners this holiday season are consumers, since major retailers are actively managing pricing and assortment and offering significant promotions throughout the weeks ahead of the holidays. Target and Toys"R"Us are aggressively encouraging consumers to start holiday shopping earlier this year by offering deep discounts: 25-percent off all toys at Target and site-wide sales at Toys"R"Us.



"Based on data from Boomerang Commerce's analysis, Amazon's strategy is to closely monitor every major retailers' holiday pricing, which makes consumers the real winners in the holiday shopping season," says Boomerang Commerce CEO Guru Hariharan. "The toys category is a strong indicator for which retailers are up for the challenge and which fall short. This season's winners will need to accelerate efforts to compete with Amazon on pricing, product assortment, product availability and customer service."

Boomerang Commerce Insights reports are produced annually for different product categories. In this report on toys and games, Boomerang analyzed 1,800 items throughout the online stores of six leading toy retailers: Amazon, Jet.com, Target, Toys"R"Us and Walmart. The analysis is based on 600 randomly selected items from each of three tiers: best-sellers, moderately popular items and less-popular (specialty) products. More details and examples for specific products are in the full report from Boomerang Commerce. The data used was compiled during October 2017.


About Boomerang Commerce

Founded in 2012, Boomerang Commerce is a leading technology company for retailers and brands to grow their e-commerce businesses. Led by veterans from Amazon and McKinsey, our sales performance management applications enable retailers and brands to drive profitable growth, streamline operations and realize their e-commerce goals in today's hyper-competitive, customer-driven world. Our products rapidly analyze, detect and recommend smart, data-driven decisions at scale. Our customers include 12 of the top 30 retailers, including Staples (News - Alert), GNC, and Groupon Goods. The company is backed by Madrona Venture Group, Shasta Ventures and Trinity Ventures and has headquarters in Mountain View, California. To learn more, visit www.boomerangcommerce.com.


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