The Amazon market is the world’s hottest product search engine. But its dominance faces rising challenges from AI and social commerce.
For greater than 20 years, Amazon has made it straightforward for customers to find merchandise, examine choices, learn evaluations, and purchase.
A 2024 Jungle Scout survey (PDF) of 1,000 U.S. internet buyers discovered that 56% initiated product searches on the Amazon market, in comparison with 42% on conventional serps (comparable to Google), and 29% on Walmart.com.
Why Amazon?
Amazon’s Prime membership was a stroke of ecommerce genius. The service adjustments the best way some customers take into consideration costs and delivery.
Merchandise on Amazon’s market are sometimes costlier than opponents’, and Prime prices $139 per yr. However to many consumers, there’s little motive to look elsewhere when delivery is free, quick, and dependable.
Choice
Furthermore, Amazon’s product choice is very large and all-inclusive. Amazon itself sells greater than 12 million merchandise. Third-party sellers add upwards of 600 million, based on revealed reviews. A client in search of an merchandise will possible discover it on Amazon.
Belief
Customers belief Amazon. They assume merchandise will arrive on time, with returns and refunds issued with out trouble.
This belief is value so much. A 2025 Salsify report (PDF) discovered that 87% of customers have paid extra for a product as a result of they belief the model. Those self same customers would possible seek for merchandise on a trusted market.
Critiques
The quantity of evaluations on Amazon attracts customers.
Critiques function resolution insurance coverage. They cut back uncertainty and shorten the analysis cycle, particularly for merchandise the place use circumstances matter. As a substitute of studying a handful of articles, evaluating retailer websites, and looking Reddit threads, customers can pull social proof from 1000’s of actual patrons with out leaving Amazon.
That comfort adjustments habits. {The marketplace} turns into a spot for decision-making, not simply to purchase. So why not begin a product search the place different customers can information you?
Cellular app
Amazon’s cell app supplies a bonus.
Trying to find merchandise in a cell internet browser is irritating, even in 2026. Pages load slowly. Pop-ups seem. Cookie prompts get in the best way. Consumers should pinch and zoom, navigate cluttered menus, and bounce between tabs.
Amazon’s app eliminates a lot of that friction for cell customers. The search field is all the time one faucet away, filters are fast to use, product pages are constant, and the comparability course of occurs naturally via scrolling relatively than clicking throughout a number of websites.
It’s expertise, and customers use it.
Search iteration
“Search iteration” is the refinement of a question.
Customers within the product discovery mode sometimes have particular wants. Amazon search can route customers towards merchandise they’re possible to purchase.
Model and mindshare
Amazon is ubiquitous past merchandise. Prime Video, Audible, Kindle, Fireplace TV, Echo gadgets, and Amazon’s creator and influencer content material not directly contribute to look dominance and behavior.
Boston Consulting Group, for instance, asserts that such “mindshare” is extremely correlated with buy consideration.
Put one other approach, the parents who watch Prime Video are prone to seek for merchandise on Amazon.
AI and Social
Taken collectively, these components function a playbook for the main product search engine and provide each classes and dilemmas for retailers. A store can, for instance, resolve to incorporate merchandise on Amazon solely for discovery advantages.
One other consideration is whether or not Amazon maintains its lead in product search.
Some 56% of respondents on the Jungle Scout 2024 survey started product searches on Amazon. However that proportion is down from the 61% reported by Jungle Scout in 2022 (PDF).
One thing is chipping away at product search and discovery. In 2026, that “one thing” is probably going AI and social.
AI commerce is prone to shift the place the primary question happens, thus eroding Amazon’s product-search dominance.
As customers ask for “the very best” product possibility, generative AI platforms will more and more assemble shortlists from a number of sources, decreasing the necessity to begin with Amazon. AI will pull discovery and comparability out of {the marketplace} interface, though Amazon can nonetheless win the transaction.
Social commerce on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube will more and more resemble serps for lifestyle-driven classes. Consumers, particularly youthful ones, usually arrive at Amazon with a product already chosen.
In these circumstances, Amazon turns into the success vacation spot relatively than the invention engine, which adjustments the economics of product search and promoting on the platform.
