Amazon raising prices by more than Target, Walmart to meet tariffs

Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have given the country’s retailers another cost to manage in a time of persistent inflation.

While many are driving the change with limited price increases, the market giant Amazon He walks more than others.

Price increases are common for retailers trying to reduce high costs resulting from tariffs. Companies involved Walmart And Aim They said they used a portfolio approach to pricing following tariff increases; This means that they increase prices on some items but not on others.

But companies rarely detail how much or on which items they increased prices.

Amazon prices were up an average of 12.8% this year as of the end of September, according to an analysis of online pricing data by third-party research firm DataWeave. Prices at Target are up 5.5% since the beginning of the year, while prices at Walmart are up 5.3%, according to the analysis.

DataWeave examined nearly 16,000 items on Amazon’s, Walmart’s, and Target’s websites to conduct its analysis. The firm says it continuously collects publicly available data and captures live product and price information. Their data spans categories, locations, and time periods according to DataWeave’s methodology.

While each of the three retailers increased their prices throughout the year, the sharpest increase was on Amazon between January and February, according to DataWeave’s analysis; Prices on surveyed SKUs (a retail industry term meaning stock-keeping units) rose 3.7%.

DataWeave found that this jump actually preceded many of President Donald Trump’s tariffs announced in April and may be the result of a normalization of prices and a decline in discounts following the 2024 holiday sales season. However, Target and Walmart increased prices by an average of 0.97% and 0.85%, respectively, over the same time period.

DataWeave’s pricing analysis compares each retailer to its own prices over time, not to competitors—and of course lower starting prices may show higher percentage increases—but there’s a common trend.

“Together, these trends show a clear hierarchy: Prices have increased fastest where consumers shop by choice rather than necessity, and where they shop most thoughtfully based on need,” Karthik Bettadapura, co-founder and CEO of DataWeave, said in a statement. he said.

For example, clothing prices rose an average of 11.5% at Amazon, Target and Walmart between January and the end of September. Prices for indoor and outdoor home furnishings rose an average of 10.8% across three retailers. Prices for pet products and supplies increased by an average of 6.1%, while prices for health and beauty products increased by an average of 7%. Hardline prices, a category that includes products such as electronics, furniture and appliances, rose 8.3%.

But on Amazon, prices for the same categories have increased more on average than at Target or Walmart.

Clothing prices increased by 14.2%, indoor and outdoor household goods prices increased by 15.3%, pet and consumable prices increased by 11.3%, health and beauty prices increased by 13.2% and hardlines category prices increased by 11.9%.

Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of AI-driven e-commerce data platform CommerceIQ, told CNBC he wasn’t surprised to see bigger price increases at the market leader.

“Third-party vendors are much more exposed to tariff-induced cost increases,” Hariharan said. “They don’t have the scale, inventory flexibility or private label advantage that large retailers like Walmart or Target can use to offset costs.”

As a result, sellers in the market often have no choice but to pass on the higher costs to the buyer, he said.

While Target and Walmart also have online marketplaces, third-party sales make up a much smaller percentage of their revenue than Amazon’s, according to executives and earnings reports.

Many economists say the full impact of the tariffs has not yet been felt across the economy as retailers work through inventory coming into the country at lower tariff levels.

“Considering Amazon as a pioneer in US commodity pricing, this trend is expected to have a significant impact on the holiday season and the economy in Q4,” Hariharan said.

Amazon’s customers don’t seem impressed by the pricing. The company said its online store sales rose 10% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Third-party seller services (Amazon’s revenue from third-party sales, including commission, order fulfillment, shipping and advertising fees) increased 12% during the same period.

“We remain committed to staying sharp on price and meeting or beating other major retailers’ prices,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

“Our sharp prices, broad product selection and fast delivery speeds continue to resonate with our customers,” added Brian Olsavsky, the company’s chief financial officer.

In response to the DataWeave price analysis, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC: “Among any major retailer’s selection, you can choose items for which prices have increased — if that’s what you’re looking for — and it’s equally easy to find items in equally large volumes that have decreased or remained the same in price over the same time period.”

“The truth is that we offer competitive, low prices for Amazon customers, and based on our extensive analysis of millions of popular products customers have purchased, we have not seen price increases outside of normal fluctuations,” the spokesperson said. “We continue to meet or exceed prices at other retailers on the wide selection of products in our store, and that’s why customers trust Amazon as a destination for low prices, and why we continue to earn more sales from customers.”

Investors and shoppers will get the latest insight into how the largest U.S. retailers are handling pricing when Target and Walmart report third-quarter results in mid-November.

Target has said multiple times this year that it would raise prices “as a last resort” to combat rising costs. In response to the DataWeave findings, a company spokesperson pointed to CNBC as an example of holding prices on back-to-school items like crayons, notebooks, and folders steady from 2024 to 2025.

“We will do everything we can to keep prices low for as long as possible,” Walmart told CNBC. The company said it has permanently reduced prices on 2,000 products since February, as opposed to temporary cuts known as Rollbacks.

In early September, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said the tariffs were causing cost increases for the company.

“We’ve seen a steady rise, sort of a gradual increase, with respect to our cost levels on general goods, which has created the single-digit inflation that we’re facing now,” McMillon told the Goldman Sachs global retail conference.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said last week that the Fed estimates the tariffs contribute five-tenths or six-tenths to the core personal consumption expenditures price index, the central bank’s preferred measure of inflation. Powell said core PCE, excluding tariffs, could be in the range of 2.3% to 2.4% instead of the 2.9% recorded in August.

The widely watched consumer price index, a broader measure of inflation, rose 3% year-on-year in September. Direct CPI comparisons for the categories in DataWeave’s study are difficult to pinpoint, but home furnishings prices rose 3.7% from January to September of this year. According to CPI data, personal care products increased by 3.5% and clothing prices increased by 2.1% in the same period.

— CNBC’s Nick Wells and Jodi Gralnick contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include Amazon’s full statement to CNBC in response to the DataWeave findings.