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

The tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have given the country’s retailers another cost to manage over a period of time Persistent inflation.

While many are navigating change with limited price increases, the market is gigantic Amazon He walks more than others.

Price increases are common for retailers trying to mitigate higher costs due to tariffs. Companies including Walmart and goal They said they were using a portfolio approach to pricing after the tariff increases, meaning they raised prices on some items but not others.

But companies rarely explain how much they are increasing prices or what items they are increasing.

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

DataWeave reviewed nearly 16,000 items on the Amazon, Walmart, and Target websites to conduct its analysis. The company says it constantly collects publicly available data and captures live product and pricing information. Its data includes categories, locations, and time periods, according to the DataWeave methodology.

While all three retailers increased prices throughout the year, the biggest increase came from Amazon between January and February, when prices for surveyed SKUs — a retail industry term meaning stock-keeping units — rose 3.7%, according to a DataWeave analysis.

DataWeave found that this jump actually came before the majority of President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which were announced in April, and could be a result of a normalization of prices and a decline in discounts after the holiday selling season in 2024. However, both Target and Walmart increased prices by an average of 0.97% and 0.85%, respectively, during the same time frame.

DataWeave’s pricing analysis compares each retailer to its own prices over time and not to competitors — sure, lower initial prices can show a higher percentage increase — but there’s a common trend.

“Together, these trends show a clear hierarchy: prices have risen faster as consumers shop by choice, not necessity, and more cautiously as they shop by need,” Karthik Pittadapura, co-founder and CEO of DataWeave, said in a statement.

For example, clothing prices rose 11.5% on average between January and the end of September at Amazon, Target, and Walmart. Prices for indoor and outdoor household goods rose by an average of 10.8% at the three retailers. Prices for pet and consumer goods rose by an average of 6.1%, and prices for health and beauty products increased by 7% on average. Prices for hardcore, a category that tends to include items such as electronics, furniture and appliances, rose 8.3%.

However, at Amazon, prices for those same categories rose more on average than at Target or Walmart.

Clothing prices rose 14.2%, indoor and outdoor household goods prices rose 15.3%, pet and consumables prices rose 11.3%, health and beauty prices rose 13.2%, and hardcore category prices rose 11.9%.

Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of AI-driven e-commerce data platform CommerceIQ, told CNBC he’s not surprised to see larger price increases on the market leader.

“Third-party sellers are more vulnerable to cost increases resulting from tariffs,” Hariharan said. “They don’t have the scale, inventory flexibility, or special leverage that big retailers like Walmart or Target can use to offset costs.”

As a result, marketplace sellers often have no choice but to charge the shopper higher costs.

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

Many economists say The full impact of the tariffs has not yet been felt Throughout the economy as retailers operate through inventory that came into the country at low tariff levels.

“If we consider Amazon a leader in US commodity pricing, it is clear that this trend is expected to have a significant impact on the holiday season and the economy in the fourth quarter,” Hariharan said.

Amazon shoppers don’t seem to be bothered by the prices. The company said its online store sales grew 10% in the third quarter compared to the same period last year. Third-party seller services — the revenue Amazon collects from third-party sales, including commissions, fulfillment, shipping, and advertising fees — increased 12% during the same period.

During the company’s third-quarter earnings call, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said: “We are committed to staying aggressive on pricing and meeting or beating the prices of other major retailers.”

“Our aggressive pricing, wide selection and fast delivery speeds continue to resonate with customers,” added company CFO Brian Olsavsky.

In response to DataWeave’s price analysis, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC: “By choosing any large retailer, you can pick out products whose prices have gone up — if that’s what you’re looking for — and it’s also easy to find products, in equally large quantities, that have dropped or stayed the same in price over the same time period.”

“The reality is that we offer competitive, low prices to Amazon customers, and based on our comprehensive analysis of millions of popular products customers buy, we have not seen price increases outside of normal fluctuations,” the spokesperson said. “We continue to meet or beat prices compared to other retailers across the wide range of products in our store, which is 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 insights into how the largest U.S. retailers are handling prices when Target and Walmart report third-quarter results in mid-November.

Target has said on several occasions this year that it would raise prices “as a last resort” to combat rising costs. A company spokesperson, in response to DataWeave’s findings, pointed to CNBC as an example of keeping prices of back-to-school items like crayons, notebooks, and folders constant from 2024 to 2025.

“We will do everything we can to keep prices as low as possible for as long as possible,” Walmart told CNBC. The company noted that 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 had driven up the company’s costs.

“We’ve seen a steady rise, kind of a gradual increase in terms of our cost levels in general merchandise, which has led to the single-digit inflation that we find ourselves dealing with now,” McMillon said at the Goldman Sachs Global Retail Conference.

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

The widely watched Consumer Price Index, a broader measure of inflation, It showed an increase of 3% year-on-year For the month of September. It’s difficult to determine direct CPI comparisons for the categories in the DataWeave study, but home furnishings prices rose 3.7% from January through September of this year. Personal care product prices rose 3.5% during the same period, and clothing prices rose 2.1%, according to Consumer Price Index data.

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

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