Start of Second Buy Box in Europe!

According to insiders, the Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein is considering opening an e-commerce marketplace. At the same time, Temu, another Chinese social commerce platform, and low-cost marketplace climbs to the top spot of the most downloaded shopping apps in the U.S. 

We are curious to see what new developments and features Amazon and the entire e-commerce sector will come up with next year. Until then, we wish all readers a well-deserved break – this newsletter will be back next month as usual.

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Analysis: Amazon Black Friday 2022

Updates: Amazon

“Very Merry Deals”: Warehouse Sale for Amazon’s Private Labels?

From December 12-21st, Amazon held another deal event, the “Very Merry Deals”. During this event, they offered products from their own brands (such as Echo and Kindle) with discounts of up to 60 %. With the label “Delivered Before Christmas,” Amazon also aims to lure last-minute buyers from brick-and-mortar retail into the online marketplace. With the relatively high discounts, Amazon is apparently trying to clear surplus stock that has accumulated in warehouses due to rather slow sales. In addition, there were already rumors this summer about a possible stop to Amazon’s own-brand sales on the marketplace. 

Update Antitrust Proceedings: Start of Second Buy Box in Europe

As already suspected, Amazon has now confirmed that it will make a number of changes in its European markets, except Italy, as part of the settlement of antitrust investigations of the EU. For example, Amazon pledged to display a second BuyBox if there is a second offer that differs in price or delivery from the first one. Amazon also confirmed it would no longer use non-public data for its private label business. However, the introduction of the second Buy Box also raises many questions that are unanswered so far – for example, about the general requirements or the effects on Amazon Ads.

Is “Amazon Inspire” Competition for TikTok?

Since the beginning of December, selected Amazon customers have been able to use the TikTok-like short video and photo feed “Inspire” in the app on the U.S. marketplace. There, they can discover content about products from influencers, brands, and customers, and purchase the products via amazon.com. This appears to be Amazon’s attempt to embrace social commerce and steal consumers away from platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Over the course of the next few months, “Inspire” should be available to all Amazon customers worldwide. 

Brands Switch from Meta to Amazon Ads

The performance of ads on Facebook and Instagram has declined for many brands due to Apple’s privacy changes and thus more comprehensive user data rights. According to Business Insider, many D2C brands have therefore discovered Amazon as a sales channel in the run-up to Christmas, and have shifted up to 30% of their ad spend to Amazon. There, the ads are significantly cheaper and promise a more profitable business. 

Lawsuit: Amazon in a Bind with Suppliers After Slowing Growth Rates

Amazon is facing a $280 million lawsuit from Gilimex Inc., a Vietnamese manufacturer of storage systems. The underlying claim is that the e-commerce giant abruptly cut back on orders after online spending growth cooled down this year, meaning less warehouse space was needed. This left the manufacturer with excess production capacity and raw materials. The lawsuit offers rare insights into Amazon’s relationships with suppliers who were essential for the company’s rapid expansion during the pandemic and are now suffering from the slowdown in growth. 

Amazon Wants to Make Prime Video More Attractive

Amazon Prime has secured the broadcasting rights to the Champions League until 2027 in Germany, whose football matches it has been broadcasting live since 2021/22. However, the largest share of the broadcasting rights went to the competitor platform Dazn. Amazon is also said to be planning a new fantasy series with five seasons to further extend the prime video offers. We see that many Germans and Spaniards already use their Prime subscription mainly for streaming — we are curious to see whether the new offer will make this share grow in other markets. Our fact of the week shows a comparison between countries on the popularity of Prime Video streaming.

Updates: E-Commerce

Walmart Loses Customers Online and Gains Them Offline

Despite great efforts to bolster its e-commerce business, Walmart was not able to prevent the user numbers of its online shop from falling by 8 % in November. Experts assume that due to inflation, many people are limiting their shopping to necessities such as groceries, which are increasingly bought in-store. This hypothesis is supported by the rising number of purchases in Walmart stores. To further accommodate inflation-stricken customers, One, a Walmart-backed fintech startup, plans to launch a buy now, pay later option for online and on-site purchases. 

Temu: New Competition for Amazon and Shein?

Chinese ultra-cheap retailer Temu opened a marketplace last autumn in the U.S., where it is currently the most downloaded shopping app. Temu is a subsidiary of the Chinese social commerce platform Pinduoduo with a marketplace volume of $185 billion. Temu invests primarily in influencer marketing and is particularly successful with its referral marketing, which rewards users with cash when they recruit new customers. 

Is Fast Fashion Retailer Shein Opening an Online Marketplace?

According to media reports, Chinese fashion giant Shein is planning to open an online marketplace for third-party sellers. The move is intended to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty through a more diverse product catalogue and more shipping options. In addition, the group presumably hopes to strengthen its competitiveness with online giants such as Amazon and Co. However, concrete details of this plan are not known, as Shein has so far refused to comment on these reports.

Launch of Local Online Marketplace in the UK

A new British marketplace, “UK Marketplace” (UKM for short), has been launched and is intended to offer British sellers an alternative to current online trading. The highlight: there are no subscriptions and the fees for sellers are only 5 %. UK Marketplace wants to differentiate itself from the competition through low transaction costs and offer its platform exclusively to British sellers. According to UKM, this is to avoid a price war by excluding Chinese manufacturers from selling on the marketplace. According to its own reports, around 70 sellers and 30,000 users are already registered.

What Caught our Attention

Those who recently visited amazon.com may have seen that the top 10 trending keywords are now displayed in the search bar. This feature can be particularly helpful in identifying seasonal keywords and products in demand. So far, this update only seems to be available for the U.S. marketplace. It remains to be seen whether this will soon be displayed on European marketplaces as well. 

It now seems possible to add multiple creatives to Sponsored Brand campaigns in all EU5 Amazon marketplaces. This option is, however, only available for campaigns that started in November or later. This could be very useful for deal events, testing different headlines, custom images, etc.

It is now possible to display up to four KPIs in the Advertising Console chart. Previously, only two KPIs could be selected at the same time.

Amazon is apparently rolling out a beta version of contextual targeting for sponsored display video ads. Contextual targeting allows you to select specific products and Amazon categories to have your ad appear on a competitor’s PDP or in category search results.

Fact of the Week

Our fact of the week shows that German Amazon shoppers are the frontrunners when it comes to using Amazon Prime to stream movies and series, with 78% using the service. The Germans are closely followed by Spain, where 72% of shoppers said they use their Prime subscription for streaming (Source: Amazon Shopper Report 2022, Remazing & Appinio).

Our Amazon Shopper Report 2022 for the U.S.

Together with Appinio, we surveyed consumers about their online shopping behavior, especially on Amazon. In addition to the German, Spanish, French, Italian, and British version, the resulting report is now also available with local insights from the U.S.

The report contains surprising insights, but above all shows how strongly the e-commerce giant from the U.S. dominates local and global e-commerce.

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Remdash: Automated Content Protection

Our case study shows how Leifheit saves more than 1,000 hours of manual work every year thanks to Remdash’s Automated Content Protection.

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Top 5 Amazon Keywords

Last week, Christmas search terms were again in the foreground in all the Amazon markets we looked at: Everywhere, users were still looking for gift inspiration with general keywords. We can also derive that this year, Lego toys and electronic devices will often be found underneath the Christmas tree.