Amazon’s Fastest Movers: Brands Leading Amazon’s Food Categories in 2015

Which brands topped Amazon’s best sellers lists in 2015?

Hot on the heels of the release of our January 2016’s FastMovers, we’re releasing our full-year 2015 rankings for three food and food-related categories on Amazon.com: Grocery & Gourmet Food, Candy & Chocolate, and Prime Pantry. Brands are ranked by their average monthly number of FastMovers—products which were among the top 100 best-selling items.

What we found:

• KIND easily took the #1 brand spot on the Grocery & Gourmet Food FastMovers rankings
• Although the Candy & Chocolate category was driven by seasonal spikes of Hershey’s and Lindt, Jelly Belly edged out the competition for the 12-month period
• Prime Pantry winners were big-name brands, particularly Nature Valley and Tide, but the nature of Pantry’s assortment meant no brands dominated the FastMovers rankings

Congratulations to those brands at the top of 2015’s FastMovers rankings. In this post, we’ll rank each category’s top brands, try to understand their success, and gather insights about each category’s particular dynamics.

Grocery & Gourmet Food: KIND Is Amazon Shoppers’ #1 Choice

KIND’s line of healthy, gluten free bars has remained an incredibly popular choice for Amazon food shoppers.

With an average of seven products per month, KIND led the list of top brands in Grocery & Gourmet Food for eleven months. (In November 2015, San Francisco Bay Coffee temporarily took the spot of #1 brand with seven FastMovers, compared to just six for KIND.)

We can deduce a few reasons for KIND’s success:

• An excited shopper base left an average of 3,265 reviews per KIND FastMover as of January 2016
• More reasons to choose: KIND FastMovers had an average of 9.2 images per product in January 2016, compared to 6.7 for all Grocery FastMovers
• And Amazon’s heavy-spending Prime households, who skew younger and wealthier than the general population, might be more attracted to this kind of tasty, healthy product

We’ll be keeping an eye on the Grocery list in 2016 to see whether KIND maintains its lead.

Below, KIND products rank #1 and #6 on the February 25^th, 2016 best sellers list for Grocery & Gourmet Food. Screenshot from Amazon.com.

Candy & Chocolate: Jelly Belly, Hershey’s Top FastMovers Rankings

Jelly Belly, with 7.3 products per month on average, and Hershey’s, with 6.9, topped the Candy & Chocolate FastMovers lists in 2015.

Unlike Grocery & Gourmet Food, seasonality appears to drive significant changes in the composition of the Candy & Chocolate FastMovers 100.

In the Easter season (April 2015), Lindt topped the charts with the addition of several truffles boxes. Around Halloween in October, Hershey’s skyrocketed to 16 FastMovers, up from 5 in September. And in the Christmas season, Lindt joined Hershey’s in the top spots.

Throughout the year, however, Jelly Belly consistently had between 5 and 9 FastMovers—enough to give Jelly Belly the #1 brand spot for 2015.

Below: number of FastMovers per month for top brands in Candy & Chocolate

The influence of seasonality on this Amazon category means it’s not a constant battle for #1 on the FastMovers list but, instead, a battle for #1 at the right times.

Prime Pantry: Big-Name Brands Lead Without Dominating

Nature Valley and Tide, with an average of 2.6 FastMovers per month, tied for the #1 brand spot in Prime Pantry in 2015.

These are big brands with huge offline presences – Nature Valley from General Mills and Tide from Procter & Gamble – rather than the niche brands that can sometimes lead the FastMovers lists for other categories. This reflects Pantry’s relatively limited assortment and, perhaps, shopping habits on Pantry.

However, the Prime Pantry FastMovers list was relatively evenly distributed among top brands: there was no month in 2015 in which a single brand had more than four FastMovers. Top brands in Grocery & Gourmet Food and Candy & Chocolate, on the other hand, had 7.3 FastMovers on average.

Will 2016 see changes?

Part of the nature of Amazon and eCommerce is that small offline players can make disproportionately large online impacts, and the vast assortment means the landscape is less likely to be dominated by a few large brands. The question is not whether 2016 will see changes to these categories’ winners and losers—but how extensive those changes will be.

Profitero monitors Amazon’s best sellers pages daily and provides monthly FastMovers reports showing which brands and products are winning, climbing, and falling. Click here to download the most recent reports.