Retail & Ecommerce

In a letter to Amazon employees published Tuesday afternoon, Jeff Bezos announced that he would step down as CEO and transition to executive chairman, where he'll focus on "new products and early initiatives." Andy Jassy, who is currently CEO of Amazon Web Services, will replace him.

Big tech reports in: Amazon and Google will report their earnings today—we'll be watching for what the holidays looked like for Amazon and whether search advertising growth continued into Q4 for Google.

eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Andrew Lipsman discusses how holiday shopping in 2020 actually went: how much was bought online, whether "shipageddon" came true, and the retail winners and losers. He then explains the implications of Walmart's ecommerce boss leaving, Poshmark's and Affirm's IPOs, and why Peloton is buying Precor.

Vaccines won't bring shoppers back to stores: Nearly half of US consumers won't return to brick-and-mortar stores for nonessential purchases even after getting vaccinated, according to new First Insight research, as online shopping habits become permanent.