Amazon's move to 1-day shipping helped juice its total deliveries to 5 billion packages last year, 16 times more than Walmart, Morgan Stanley estimates (AMZN, WMT)

Amazon packages

Amazon sold an additional $36 billion worth of products in North America last year, following the launch of its one-day shipping initiative, according to Morgan Stanley.
Amazon's e-commerce sales volume in the US is 12 times larger than Walmart's, Morgan Stanley estimates.
As shipping frequency increases, package volume is also growing on Amazon, and is now estimated to be 16 times larger than that of Walmart's, according to Morgan Stanley.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon's move to shorten its standard delivery time from two days to one day is helping it significantly grow its sales volume and widen its gap with competitors, according to Morgan Stanley.

In a note published on Sunday, Morgan Stanley wrote that Amazon sold an additional $36 billion worth of products in North America last year — a record amount — following the rollout of the one-day delivery initiative. That's larger than Walmart's entire e-commerce business, which is estimated to have sold $17 billion worth of products last year, based on Morgan Stanley estimates. The gross merchandise volume estimates exclude orders from Amazon's Whole Foods and Walmart's in-store pickup service.

"Amazon's share gains accelerated throughout 2019 (now driving 65% of every addressable incremental dollar spent online or offline) as the rollout of 1-day shipping the US led to record Amazon e-commerce GMV dollar growth," Morgan Stanley wrote in the note.

To put that in perspective, Morgan Stanley estimates Amazon's US sales volume is around $198 billion, or 12 times larger than Walmart's. It also estimates that Amazon shipped more than 5 billion packages last year, or roughly 16 times more than Walmart did for its e-commerce business.

Here's how Morgan Stanley reached its estimates:

Morgan Stanley Amazon estimate
More important, Morgan Stanley sees Amazon's lead only amplifying as it makes more products available for one-day shipping this year. When Amazon first announced one-day shipping in the first quarter of last year, only 7% of products sold were estimated to be one-day eligible, but that number could grow to 45% by the end of this year, according to Morgan Stanley.

"1-day shipping is another example of Amazon's successful behavioral modification efforts…in this case as it addressed a consumer friction point holding back certain online purchases (like consumables) and is increasing expectations for e-commerce shipping times," the note said.

Amazon accounts for roughly 38% of all US e-commerce sales, according to eMarketer's latest report, published this week. Walmart is a distant second, with 5.3% of the market.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Watch Elon Musk unveil his latest plan for conquering Mars