Large retailers are in total control of their relationship with Amazon and should use the e-commerce giant‘s wide range of services to grow sales and increase brand awareness.
That‘s the clear message in a new whitepaper from e-commerce platform ChannelAdvisor, who says it can help large brands because it is offering retailers unique options, giving them more control over how their brand is represented on Amazon, so they can leverage the opportunity for increased traffic and sales, across devices, without diminishing their character or identity.
Amazon‘s global fulfilment networks, which are being brought ever closer to consumer‘s homes to minimise delivery times and costs, could also be capitalised on if a retailers existing customer delivery experience is not unique. The number of sellers using its fulfilment service rose 65 per cent last year.
Since its inception in 1995 as an online bookstore, Amazon has evolved into the world‘s leading online retailer. It has been a major player in the ‘showrooming‘ trend- a recent consumer habit of comparing prices in-store. With as much as 30 per cent of consumers now starting their product research on its site, according to Forrester research, large retailers can capture showrooming traffic by listing on Amazon. There are over 20m unique visits monthly to amazon.co.uk while its German site amazon.de has 24m.
But what about the e-commerce giants‘ pricing strategies?
ChannelAdvisor aims to debunk the view: “If my products do well in the third-party marketplace, Amazon will start selling similar products and undercutting my prices.”
According to data published this year, its third-party marketplace is growing twice as fast as Amazon Retail, and currently makes up more than a third of its revenue. It says large brands can mitigate the risks they face in the midst of the showrooming trend by ”bookending” deal-seeking shoppers – meeting them in the online and the offline world – with a presence on Amazon.
This means if a consumer is browsing in your bricks and mortar store and visits the Amazon website via mobile or tablet at least you have a chance of competing with other third party sellers who may be selling your product for less.
“Consumers‘ behaviours are changing,” said Zoe Ripley, ChannelAdvisor‘s Director of Marketing, EMEA.“ They want limitless buying options, they want the best price and they want the security of knowing the site they‘re buying from.”
To read the full ChannelAdvisor whitepaper, please click on the file below.
