🛑 Attention Amazon Sellers

U.S. e-commerce just crossed $10 trillion in cumulative sales during Q3 2025, and the headline number is not the real story.

Marketplacepulse’s 25 years of data show 3 consistent growth phases: emergence, expansion & maturity, disrupted only twice by global crises.

Today’s market is in the maturity phase, living in a 5-10% quarterly growth world, which sounds “slow” until you remember that Q3 2025 alone did $275B, more than the first five years of tracked history combined.

ATH, baby!

📰 What you need to know

👉 Alexa+ is now available to all U.S. customers, and Prime members get “unlimited access” and, for Sellers… Amazon is pushing voice into shopping behaviors like deal monitoring, gift brainstorming plus instant checkout, grocery ordering and dynamic shopping lists. Less “search and compare,” more “notify me and buy it.”

On the other hand, Amazon and OpenAI are reportedly discussing a broad partnership so OpenAI models could help power Alexa and other internal projects. If this happens, expect even faster iteration in agentic commerce experiences. Rufus is just the beggining.

👉 Tied to this, Sponsored Products just unlocked Rufus prompt reporting data and you can now see the actual questions shoppers ask Rufus, which prompts drive impressions and clicks, and you can even pause individual prompts.

So this is basically Amazon telling you that conversational discovery is replacing old-school keyword thinking

👉 Are you in Dubai next week for Worldef? let’s meet!

👉 Andy Jassy picked a marketplace exec as his new “shadow” technical advisor. Dharmesh Mehta (VP, worldwide selling partner services) is stepping into the role in March. If you sell on Amazon, pay attention: this is the kind of leadership pipeline that shapes priorities for 3Ps.

👉 Walmart crossed the $1 trillion market cap threshold and is leaning hard into tech-like monetization with ads, memberships and fintech as the main profit engines. Nothing new here: retail media is not a test anymore, but a core line item.

💡 Weekly tip: Vendor Trick: Use Seller to Fix Your Vendor Forecast

One of the most underused Vendor growth tactics is using Seller activity to influence Amazon’s demand forecasting.

Here’s why it works:

Amazon’s Vendor POs are heavily influenced by sell-through signals, not just historical 1P performance. When an ASIN shows strong retail demand signals (traffic, conversion, velocity), it often improves Amazon’s confidence in future orders.

So you can run targeted Seller campaigns can:

• Generate real demand signals

• Increase keyword ranking and conversion history

• Improve Amazon’s confidence in inventory rotation

• Help trigger stronger Vendor forecasts and larger POs

This is especially powerful for:

• New product launches (also, Vine is much cheaper on Seller than Vendor)

• Seasonal items

• ASINs with unstable Vendor ordering patterns

• Products Amazon is hesitant to scale

Coordination is key. You must control pricing, Buy Box eligibility and inventory strategy to avoid channel conflict.

When done correctly, Seller doesn’t compete with Vendor. It feeds Vendor.