The Maze: Amazon's US customers place an average of 22 online orders a year. Walmart's place about 15. This is purchase frequency: orders per shopper at each retailer, rather than orders per US resident. Ecommerce data provider ECDB compares ten retailers for 2025. Its finding exposes a competitive advantage beyond the size of Amazon's sales: more occasions when shoppers already have a reason to use its checkout.
Amazon gets more chances to become the default. Its 22 annual orders put it ahead of Walmart, whose underlying figure is 14.8, rounded to 15 for display. Third-placed eBay reaches ten, less than half Amazon's count. Those are separate retailer customer bases, so the ranking does not track the same shoppers moving between stores. Still, a higher frequency means more buying occasions per customer. That gives Amazon more opportunities to become the familiar place to complete the next purchase, including purchases outside the category that first brought someone in.
A broad checkout competes with specialist shopping trips. Pet retailer Chewy and Temu each reach seven annual orders; Target reaches five. Shein and Home Depot each reach four, while Best Buy and Costco reach three. The specialists sell goods with very different replacement cycles. A laptop is not dog food. Amazon can serve several of those needs within the same account and delivery relationship. The strategic pressure is therefore broader than matching a specialist's range: a rival may need to persuade shoppers to leave a checkout they use more often for other purchases.
Shipping can make the next order easier to justify. ECDB links Amazon's frequency to Prime, its paid membership with shipping benefits on eligible purchases, and fast delivery. Once a shopper has paid the membership fee, another eligible order need not bring another shipping charge. That can reduce the reason to wait and combine several needs into one basket. This is a plausible explanation for frequent ordering, rather than a measured causal result of this comparison. The data do not isolate membership, delivery speed or product breadth, and they do not show how many orders a competitor lost.
The strongest defence depends on the category. Three annual online orders at Costco or Best Buy do not establish weak customer relationships: bulk baskets and expensive electronics can produce substantial sales with fewer transactions. Revenue also depends on customer numbers and spending per order. Amazon's frequency lead instead raises a specific question for competitors: which purchases warrant a separate visit? Where advice, assortment or buying in bulk makes that trip valuable, matching Amazon's order count may be the wrong goal. Where a product is interchangeable and readily delivered, familiar checkout convenience may be harder to overcome.
Why it matters: Amazon's breadth gives it a possible advantage that a category specialist cannot simply copy: shopping for one need can keep the account familiar for the next, unrelated need. The commercial test is whether rivals offer a reason to make that separate trip. This selected US comparison supports that strategic tension, not a claim that frequency guarantees profits or proves customer switching. Rounded counts and undisclosed sampling limits also rule out reading small differences as precise measures of loyalty.
Sources: ECDB, 19 October 2026 · Original provider post
