Monthly Amazon Update – November 2019

Marketplace News

Amazon wants to launch its own supermarket chain as an alternative to its own organic brand Whole Foods in 2020. The first store is supposed to be built in Woodland Hills near Los Angeles, California. How the new chain will position itself is yet unknown, although its focus is not supposed to be organic products like Whole Foods or cashierless stores like Amazon Go. By establishing a classic supermarket chain, Amazon wants to further build its customer loyalty and mix up the multi billion dollar grocery industry, rivaling the dominant brand Walmart.  Link

Sporting goods manufacturer Nike will not be selling its products on Amazons website in the future. The pilot program, which runs since 2017, will be ending now, reason being an enhanced focus on other e-commerce retail partners to build more a direct and personal connection with its customers. The declining number of big brands selling on Amazon could be explained by the rising amount of fake products and unauthorized sellers who cut prices on the marketplace. Link

This years Black Friday generated a 7.4 billion US-Dollar revenue with online purchases. The share of orders from mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets rose by 40%, with the average customer spending 168 US-Dollars. Amazon was able to increase their revenue on Black Friday by 49% compared to last year. Link

New Features

Amazon is testing two new features right now in beta phases: a new A/B test function for registered brands allows to make a bigger change to a product listing and test its customer impact. The other one is an Instagram-like feature allowing brands to make captioned image posts for users to explore. Especially the latter one shows that Amazon wants to establish itself more strongly in the “product discovery” area, to offer customers more content to discover new products. Link

Amazon Vine for sellers: starting December 11, sellers can also use the Amazon Vine program, which was previously only available for Vendors and lets them send new products to dedicated testers, who then write first reviews using their honest opinions. The program will be available to sellers for free in the first six months and will be available to sellers with a registered brand. Further pricing details are still to be announced, yet it is likely that Amazon will offer a separate pricing structure for sellers. Link