Amazon named world's most valuable retail brand

Amazon has been named the world’s most valuable retail brand by Kantar Millward Brown in its latest brand values report. The commerce giant has been valued at 98.98 billion USD.
 
Kantar said Amazon has continually pushed into new areas, increasing its value along the way and its efforts to expand its dominance across consumer categories continued to build in 2016.
 
The BrandZ Top 25 Most Valuable Global Retail Brands report said Amazon’s brand value has risen by 59 percent year-on-year, beating other major names including Alibaba, Home Depot, Walmart, Ikea and Costco by a wide margin.
 
Alibaba was second with a 26 percent lower brand value of 49.29 billion dollars followed by Home Depot, up 32 percent at 36.44 billion dollars, Walmart down 23 percent at 27.27 billion dollars, and Ikea, up 6 percent at 18.08 billion dollars.
 
The top 25 saw their overall value rising 7 percent, with the remaining 19 being Costco Wholesale, Lowe’s, Aldi, CVS Pharmacy, JD.com, Walgreens, 7 Eleven, Target, Tesco, Kroger, Carrefour, Woolworths, Lidl, Macy’s, Whole Foods, Nordstrom, Auchan, M&S, and Sam’s Club.
 
“The [Amazon] business is now as much a technology and media company as it is a retailer,” said the report. “It offers music streaming by subscription, was behind 16 Emmy nominations for original content in 2016, and Amazon Studios has released its first original movie, Chi-Raq, directed by Spike Lee.”
 
Amazon is becoming omnichannel and has clear intentions of disrupting retail experiences across product categories. While online represents the bulk of its business, the company is testing out physical stores and is seeing early signs that voice-command sales are likely to be the next wave of revenue generation.

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