Walmart Inc., Best Buy Co Inc and hundreds of smaller retailers are improving their online gift features, hoping to challenge the dominance of Amazon.com Inc. as a holiday gift seller to home buyers.
Through the service, users can purchase gifts online and deliver them to recipients with a personal order or receipt that does not indicate the price of the gift.
Amazon’s competitors have worked to achieve their online priorities, spending millions to fulfill orders faster, expanding product catalogs, providing free shipping and even subscription services.
In addition, consumers were found to be inclined to Walmart and other retailers in the early stages of the epidemic because Amazon was allegedly slow to deliver essential items including toilet tissue. Now, Amazon competitors are looking at other opportunities to grab market share.
For example, Walmart.com on October 28 added the label "gift eligible" on hundreds of thousands of US product pages, including toilet tissue, a status that was not previously displayed until payment. It means Walmart can send gift receipts as well as let buyers give speeches via email.
In addition, Walmart added inventory of laptops, leisure equipment and training equipment ahead of the holidays. Buyers can specifically search for only eligible items for the first time.
While BestBuy.com in mid-October added an option for receiving prizes with store recruitment. This also started allowing buyers to arrange Best Buy to send an email to the recipient of the gift with a festive greeting on the same day the goods were delivered.
Meanwhile, Estee Lauder Companies Inc this year uses technology from startup SmartGift that adds options on its 5 websites for shoppers to order cosmetics and other items as gifts while letting the recipient choose a color, size or scent before delivery.
According to a data, Americans will spend $ 160 billion on prizes this quarter, up 5% from last year. Adobe Inc Magento e-commerce software unit expects Americans to send 67% more holiday gifts than a year ago to 18% of recipients.
Previously, Amazon has maintained its dominance as the entire e-commerce industry thrives in the epidemic. Amazon product sales increased 32% this year to September, almost 2 times compared to the same period last year.