Launch of Amazon Poland and rising costs
The biggest news first: Amazon.pl is online! This Tuesday, the 19th Amazon marketplace worldwide went live. We will keep following the development closely.
With Amazon’s expansion, not only sales but also logistics costs are growing. However, the investments seem to continue to pay off: American customers are more likely to use Amazon Prime than premium programs by competitors and British shoppers are excited about the first “Amazon Go” store in the UK, which will open in London.
General Updates
Launch of Amazon Poland
On Tuesday, Amazon’s Polish marketplace officially launched – the biggest Amazon launch so far with more than 70,000 merchants already registered on the platform. This means that there is a local marketplace available in all major European economies except Switzerland and Russia. Amazon.pl is the 19th marketplace for Amazon worldwide. It will be interesting to see how the platform will manage to compete with Polish market leader Allegro.
Walmart’s and Shopify’s growth in 2020
With Walmart and Shopify, two more major e-commerce players have released their annual results from last year. Walmart’s 2020 revenue grew 8% year-over-year to $ 560 billion. Shopify saw its 2020 revenue grow 86% year-over-year to $ 2.9 billion. Through Shopify, a gross merchandise volume of $ 119.6 billion was generated by sellers last year (96% increase YOY).
Amazon lowers FBA returns processing fee in Europe & UK
Since the beginning of March, Amazon has suspended the handling fee for customer returns in Europe and the United Kingdom for watches and jewelry, and significantly reduced it for clothing, shoes and handbags. These charges normally have to be paid by FBA sellers. Through the reduction, Amazon wants to support especially small sellers in the currently challenging situation due to the corona pandemic.
Rise in Amazon’s shipping and fulfillment spend
Globally, Amazon’s shipping and fulfillment costs increased 53% in 2020 to $119.6 billion (€97.76 billion) for shipping and fulfillment. Fulfillment costs alone increased 45% compared to 2019 – when they were up 18%. Amazon’s logistics spending thus accounts for 31% of net sales.
More Amazon Prime memberships than Walmart +
According to a recent survey, more Americans use Amazon Prime than Walmart +, the premium model of US rival Walmart. 64% of respondents had an Amazon Prime membership in early January 2021, only 21% had a Walmart + account. As a comparison: 63% of respondents in Germany were Amazon Prime members in 2019.
First Amazon Go store in the UK
The first “Amazon Go” supermarket in Great Britain is opening in London soon. The project was kept secret – but it was now revealed that the store will probably open its doors this week. This makes it the first “Amazon Go” store outside the US. As Forbes reports, 30 more stores are planned in the UK.
E-commerce share in China to exceed 50% in 2021
Market research firm Emarketer forecasts that online purchases in China will account for 52.1% of total purchases by the end of 2021. This corresponds to an increase of 7.3% compared to the previous year. This would make China the first country in the world where more purchases were made online than in stationary retail. The corona pandemic and digital shopping via social media are cited as decisive factors for this development.
Changes we observed
Recently, we have observed that Sponsored Brand Ads more often lead to individualized landing pages. The difference to “normal” landing pages: In addition to the list of products, there are banners that provide an additional opportunity to display your own individual advertising message.
There is a new targeting option in DSP Ads: It is now possible to directly target brands which are selling on Amazon and choose the product categories which are relevant for you. The target group does no longer have to be built on the basis of individual ASINs. However, the option is not yet available for all brands.
New Remdash Feature: Keyword Highlighting
Remdash now helps you even more with your content creation tasks thanks to its new feature: keywords entered in Remdash are highlighted in different colors in the text. Like this, you can easily see which keyword is present and how often in which area of a PDP.
Top 5 Amazon Keywords
It seems like we can observe a kind of “corona pandemic fatigue” with the low share of corona-related keywords at the end of February. Especially in Germany and France, shoppers increasingly searched for game consoles and sports equipment, while face masks did not make it into the top 5 keywords.