Analysis: sports products on Amazon & Zalando

Online marketplaces – An analysis of the top 100 most popular sports products on Amazon and Zalando

Online marketplaces are on the rise. User generated content has never been more important. Direct-to-consumer brands compete with incumbents. With this paper, we look into the apparel and sporting goods industries and analysis the top 100 products on Amazon and Zalando. We were particularly interested in the role of product ratings & reviews. This report gives some insights into this highly dynamic market segment and highlights best practice in the sports industry.

Summary

• Nike, Adidas, and Puma have the highest number of products among the Top 100 listings across the four platforms examined: AmazonDE, AmazonUK, AmazonFR and ZalandoDE.
• Big brands are present across all researched sporting goods categories and countries, whereas non-branded producers typically appear in just one category or on one country’s platform. Hence, those could be called “category killers” as opposed to firms with a wide products assortment.
• The majority (61.5% for all four platforms, 75.7% with Zalando excluded) of all top 100 products across the four categories are sold by non-branded manufacturers, especially on Amazon. Here, single no-name manufacturers selling their goods on just one platform, most frequently AmazonUK, become more visible, showing that they manage to generate lots of reviews and sales without a brand name to rely on.
• Fitness is the product category with the highest review volume.
• There are many non-branded products represented in the top 100 list, especially on Amazon, proving that there is room for branded products to improve their position when focusing more on review management.

Particularly interesting is the performance of NIKE products on Amazon as they show a very high number of ratings & reviews. As NIKE is no longer actively working with Amazon after its pilot, one might ask why this is still the case? Two possible reasons: during the pilot with Amazon, NIKE put a particular emphasis on this. Alternatively, during this time customers left many reviews due to the attractiveness of the brand products.

If you want to learn more about the case “NIKE on Amazon” read our LinkedIn post here.

Authors: gominga eServices GmbH and EDM Publications.

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