• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, June 1, 2022

Amazon will surpass Walmart to become the largest retailer in the U.S. by 2024 -- adding more than $294 billion in U.S. sales between 2021 and 2026, according to findings from a report released Wednesday.

Edge By Ascential’s annual 2022 United States Retail Landscape and Go-to-Market Planning Report predicts online will account for more than 30% of the U.S. chain retail sales by 2026, and Amazon will take 14.9% U.S. retail market share by that year.

Most of the data was sourced through Edge by Ascential Retail Insight February 14, 2022. Retail sales referenced are calculated using Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), a standard used to measure the size of a third-party marketplace. It is calculated by multiplying the number of products sold by the price at which each product was sold over a given time period. Edge Retail Insight covers almost 2,500 retail chains worldwide.

Walmart will take 12.7% in retail sales by 2026, and Costco will rise from 3.8% in 2021 to 4.4%, becoming the top second and third U.S. retailers that year.

Home Depot will become the fourth-largest retailer in the U.S., with a market share increase from 3.7% in 2021 to 3.9% by 2026.

In 2021, the top five U.S. retailers were Walmart, Amazon, Kroger, Costco, and The Home Depot.

Online grocery sales will add $34.7 billion in U.S. sales between 2021 and 2026. In 2021, online edible grocery sales in the U.S. reached $54.8 billion, up 117% on 2019.

Online edible grocery in the U.S. in 2021 stood at 6.5%, with about 50% of that attributed to Walmart, Target, Kroger and Costco -- all of which accelerated their edible grocery ecommerce presence and capability during the pandemic years.

The data also shows that first-party business models continue to influence U.S. ecommerce -- accounting for 68% of U.S. chain retail ecommerce sales.

For Amazon, however, third-party business models account for more than 60% of its ecommerce sales, growing to 67% of its ecommerce sales in 2026.

U.S. ecommerce will account for 30.5% of total retail sales by 2026 -- up from 24.6% in 2021 -- and will be the world’s largest ecommerce market after China, according to Edge.

Ecommerce is the top driver of retail growth in the U.S. and is estimated to exceed $1 trillion by the end of 2022.

In 2021, the data suggests U.S. online sales rose 15.2% to $907.7 billion, up from $787 billion in 2020 -- two times the growth of overall U.S. retail sales, which grew by 7.6% in 2021.

The data forecasts online-edible grocery share will comprise 8.8% of all ecommerce sales by 2026.