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The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart

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The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart

The Extraordinary Size of Amazon in One Chart

It’s bigger than most brick and mortar retailers together

The Chart of the Week is a weekly Visual Capitalist feature on Fridays.

What has more value: all major publicly traded department stores in the United States, or Amazon?

Amazon takes the cake, and its no contest.

Add together the market caps of Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Kohl’s, JCPenney, Sears, and Macy’s, and they amount to a significant $297.8 billion:

Brick & Mortar Store2016 Value ($B)
Sears$1.1
JCPenney$2.6
Nordstrom$8.3
Kohl's$8.8
Macy's$11.0
Best Buy$13.2
Target$40.6
Walmart$212.4
Total$297.8

However, it’s not enough to beat the Amazon machine.

The online retailer alone is worth $356 billion, making it one of the largest companies by market capitalization in the world.

The Death of Traditional Retail

Ten years ago, the future of brick and mortar retail sill looked bright. The aforementioned retailers were worth a collective $400 billion, and Amazon was only valued at $17.5 billion.

But disruption often comes without warning. Or if there were warning signs, they went unheeded by retailers.

Big box and department store sales plummeted, as consumers increasingly went online to do their shopping. This year, it is estimated that revenues are equal to just 62% of their totals in 2006:

Big Box and Department Store Sales ($ Billion)
Big Box and Retail Store Sales

Retailers without the right strategy saw their market caps plummet.

Sears went from being worth $27.8 billion to $1.1 billion (a 96% decrease), while JCPenney went from $18.1 billion to $2.6 billion (a 86% decrease).

Here’s the full damage over the last 10 years to brick and mortar stores:

Store2006 Value ($B)2016 Value ($B)% Change
Sears$27.8$1.1-96%
JCPenney$18.1$2.6-86%
Nordstrom$12.4$8.3-33%
Kohl's$24.2$8.8-64%
Macy's$24.2$11.0-55%
Best Buy$28.4$13.2-54%
Target$51.3$40.6-21%
Walmart$214.0$212.4-1%
Total$400.4$297.8-26%

Amazon, on the other hand, did okay for itself.

The online retailer gained 1,934% in value over the same timeframe, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world, and a key piece of Jeff Bezos’ business empire.

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Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

We visualized the results of an analysis by the World Economic Forum, which uncovered the jobs most impacted by AI.

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Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.

In this graphic, we’ve visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.

Data and Methodology

To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.

With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.

DepartmentLarge impact (%)Small impact (%)No impact (%)
IT73261
Finance70219
Customer Sales671617
Operations651817
HR57412
Marketing56413
Legal46504
Supply Chain431839

In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.

Where AI will make the biggest impact

Jobs in information technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.

Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.

Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.

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