Toys Matter for Amazon Holiday Shopping

Last week we looked at how Amazon customers order over the holidays compared to the rest of the year. The data seemed to support our thesis that Amazon functions more like a convenience store than a normal multi-category retailer. While customers shop at Amazon.com for gifts and holiday needs, the data suggests that at the transaction level, the holidays don’t matter to Amazon nearly as much as they do to other retailers.

This week we look at what types of products Amazon customers buy over the holidays compared to the rest of the year. Previously, we looked at the number of items and dollar value of individual orders. We showed order size doesn’t increase materially during the holiday quarter compared to the rest of the year.

We look at six of Amazon’s most important departments: books, electronics, home, grocery, toys, and clothing. In our surveys, we ask Amazon customers which departments were included in their most recent order. For all but toys and apparel, we see little difference between the holiday quarter and the other three quarters of the year. Not surprisingly, the toy category experiences the biggest increase during the holiday quarter.

The percentage of orders including toys almost doubles in the holiday quarter, with 12% of customers including toys in their most recent order in Q4-2023, compared to 7% in the first three quarters of 2024 (Chart 1).