Monthly Archives: July 2022

The Amazon Asia and Pacific marketplace comprises Japan, India, Singapore and Australia. Japan actually ranks as the fourth leading market for Amazon, behind the U.S., Germany, and the U.K.  

If you are an Amazon seller marketing only to the U.S. and not any of the Amazon Asia countries, you are missing out on a significant transpacific opportunity. In this post we take a look at the Amazon Asia-Pacific marketplace, including:

This is part three of our three part series on the 20 worldwide Amazon marketplaces. For more information on the other reason, you can read more on:

Why Sell in Amazon Asia & Pacific Marketplace

Why sell in Amazon Asia? Asia-Pacific eCommerce sales grew by 26.4% in 2020. Of course, the pandemic has made eCommerce an even more vital part of the Asia-Pacific economy, a trend that is likely to continue even post COVID.

The Asia Pacific market not only represents significant potential for you to reach new customers and generate sales, but represents a significant opportunity to diversify your revenue streams and improve cash flow.

A Brief History of Amazon Asia

Interestingly, while three-quarters of new sellers in the top four core markets are based in China, Amazon withdrew its Amazon.cn site in 2019. With a market share of less than 1 percent, Amazon couldn’t overcome the stiff competition from dominant and established Chinese giants Alibaba and JD.com. However, Amazon continues to encourage cross border sales from Japan, as well as its U.S., U.K., and German sites.

How Big is the Amazon Asia Marketplace

Amazon has expanded slowly due in part to competition from established eCommerce platforms in the region. Amazon Japan and Amazon Singapore have so far been the most successful. Amazon recently moved into the food delivery market in India where current players are struggling. At least one analyst believes this could prove the catalyst for further expansion. 

List of Countries in Amazon Asia-Pacific Marketplace

Note: Sources for country information include Statista, and ecommerceDB, as well as Amazon.

Amazon in Japan – Amazon.co.jp
Country Code – JP

Japan is the third largest economy in the world. Seventy two percent of Japanese shoppers make purchases online. Japan’s eCommerce market is expected to reach $325 billion by the end of 2026, and is ranked second only to China in the Asia-Pacific region, fourth globally.

Amazon Japan is the leading online marketplace in Japan, next to Rakuten Ichiba and Yahoo Shopping. The website can be viewed both in English as well as Japanese. Orders can be shipped to more 65 countries/regions that participate in the Amazon Global Program. It currently does not offer Amazon Prime.

• Population: 128 Million
• Language: Japanese
• Launched: 2000
• 2020 revenue: $20.46 million
• Fulfillment centers: 9
• Top category: Electronics & Media

Singapore – Amazon.sg
Country Code – SG

Singapore was the first country in Southeast Asia to get a dedicated Amazon site. Although shoppers there could access Amazon.com, many items were not available to ship to Singapore or incurred high international shipping fees. There was also a mobile app launched in 2017 that offered Prime membership for fast delivery of groceries and household goods. So the Amazon brand was well known already before Amazon.sg went online. 

Amazon.sg is in English. FBA fees are also lower than in the U.S. Singapore’s retail eCommerce grew in 2020 by 71.1% and is expected to grow by 73% by 2020.

• Population: 5.9 million
• Language: English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil 
• Launched: 2019
• 2020 revenue: 92.8 million
• GDP per capita: $65.2K
• Ecommerce market 2021: $2.7 billion, annual growth rate of 9.9%
• Warehouse: 1
• Fulfillment centers: 2
• Top category: Electronics & Media

Australia – Amazon.com.au
Country Code – AU

While Amazon has lost money in Australia despite an uptick in sales (a 99.4 percent jump from the year prior) largely atrictured to COVID (net loss of $3.8 million in 2019, though better than the previous year loss of $4.7 million). Amazon recently announced a 200,000 square meter robotic fulfillment facility in Sydney, which doubles its fulfillment capacity.

• Population: 128 Million
• Language: English
• Launched: 2017
• 2020 revenue: $1.12 billion
• Fulfillment centers: 3
• Top category: Electronics & Media

India – Amazon.in
Country Code – IN

[Editor’s note: Though India is technically considered an Amazon Europe marketplace, we are also providing the India marketplace data into this piece for geographic reasons.]

India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies. By 2025, one-fifth of the world’s population will be Indian, and by 2030 there will be over 850 million Internet users on the subcontinent.

It is the eighth largest market for eCommerce, with a revenue of US$46 billion in 2020. The biggest player in that market is Amazon, whose 2020 revenue jumped by 42%. While Amazon has operated in India since 2012 with Junglee.com.The site was primarily a comparison shopping website. Junglee was closed down in 2017 and searches redirected to Amazon.in.

According to RBC, India alone could represent an $18 billion revenue opportunity for Amazon. The firm’s analysis projects that by 2023, India could account for 13% of Amazon’s international sales, and 4% of the company’s total revenue. 

• Population: 1 billion
• Language: Hindi, English
• Launched: 2017
• 2020 revenue: $1.12 billion
• eCommerce revenue share in India: 30%
• Fulfilment center locations: 60
• Top category: Electronics & Media

How to Get Started Selling in Amazon Asia

Amazon provides a four step process for Amazon sellers to expand their business to Japan, Australia, India and Singapore.

1. Decide where and when to sell. Assess the costs to register in a country and the the taxes you need to pay against the potential interest in your products in a given country/marketplace.
2. Register and list the countries in where you want to sell. Keep in mind that product must be listed in the native language of the country you are selling in.
3. Decide on how to ship and fulfill (either FBA or FBM; FBA may be the easiest option, at least to get started).
4. Manage your business, provide customer support, and scale.

In other words, it’s not that much different than selling on the U.S. site. Amazon does support services for managing sales, customer service and translations into English for those sites where English is not the primary language.

For more specific instructions, refer to our guide: How to Sell Globally on Amazon.

Getting started in these markets with FeedbackWhiz has never been easier. With just the click of a button, you’ll have the expansive functionality of FeedbackWhiz’s powerful tools you’ve come to learn and love ready to penetrate into these markets. 

FeedbackWhiz users now have the ability to fully automate the functionality of Amazon’s Request a Review Button without the unnecessary addition of browser extensions. Now, imagine automating review requests to billions of new customers around the planet in seconds. 

And with the powerful profits and analytics tool, you can aggregate all the important data from all of your products across ALL your marketplaces. Or segment by individual marketplaces to pinpoint which item is your most profitable in specific markets.

Tips and Reminders on the Amazon Asia & Pacific Marketplace

Still not sure if you are ready to sell in Amazon Asia? We tapped six well-known Amazon experts with one question: What advice can you give to sellers looking to expand into new Amazon marketplaces and sell globally?

Amazon Global Selling is not for everyone. There are many considerations and potential complications to consider before diving in, so it isn’t the sort of program that a seller should join without doing some serious research first. Most businesses that fulfill their own orders and don’t intend on utilizing FBA for international sales probably won’t want to deal with shipping long distances away.

Again, keep in mind that you have to list products in the language of that country’s Amazon marketplace and adhere to all VAT rules and other legal regulations. Make sure you fully understand what you are getting into before getting into it.

Final Thoughts on the Amazon Asia & Pacific Marketplace

If you’re considering going transpacific with your business, FeedbackWhiz can make your entry so much easier. It provides a range of order and feedback management, email automation, product review monitoring and notifications and a profits and accounting tool that works in all the Asia-Pacific marketplaces. Watch a demo to get started. 

Best of all, you can try out the software with a 30-day free trial. FeedbackWhiz is your passport to the Amazon Asia-Pacific marketplace.

*Editor’s Note: This article on Amazon Asia was originally published on August 2, 2021. It was updated on July 11, 2022.

Amazon started in the U.S. (in the garage of Jeff Bezos’s Bellevue, Washington home). It opened a dedicated website for Canada in 2002, for Mexico in 2015, and for Brazil in 2012. Amazon America sellers currently can sell across the United States, Canada and Mexico from one account. Indeed, 50 percent of the top 500 North American sellers market across multiple marketplaces, up from 32 percent in 2020. In short, the Amazon America marketplace is HUGE.

You can easily sell to the United States, Canada, Mexico and even Brazil with an America Unified Account. If you are an Amazon seller marketing only to a single country in the Americas, you are missing out on a significant cross-border opportunity. Let’s explore the Amazon America marketplace in our second regional marketplaces spotlight.

In this post we take a look at:

This is part two of our three part series on the 20 worldwide Amazon marketplaces. For more information on the other reason, you can read more on:

Why Sell in Amazon America? Why Not?

North America accounts for Amazon’s largest slice of net revenue sources ($386.06 billion, 104.41 billion in 2020 of which were generated from non-U.S. countries). The North America segment contributed 61 percent of net sales in Q1 2020.

It would be one thing if selling outside of your country were an immense hassle. But since Amazon makes it easy for you, why not test the beyond borders potential. 

You may have to create separate SKU listings depending on whether you are fulfilling yourself in one case and using FBA in another. But this is a minor inventory management matter. 

In addition, the pandemic has made eCommerce an even more vital part of the North and South American economy, a trend that is likely to continue even post COVID. The wider Americas market not only represents significant potential for you to reach new customers and generate sales, but represents a significant opportunity to diversify your revenue streams and improve cash flow.

A Brief History of the Amazon America Marketplace

Interestingly enough, Amazon started selling internationally first in Europe just three years after the company was founded before expanding north and south of its U.S. domestic borders with a dedicated Amazon-branded website. 

In Canada, Amazon employs more 23,000 full- and part-time employees at fulfillment centers and various other facilities and recently announced plans to hire 1800 more for corporate and IT positions. There are two fulfillment centers in Mexico and eight logistics centers  in Brazil. Of course, as the home base and country of origin, U.S. operations and sales predominate.

The Size of the Amazon America Marketplace

Amazon North American sales totaled $64.37 billion in 2021 1Q, up 40 percent from the previous year. It almost goes without saying that the U.S. is the largest marketplace of the Americas. It is in fact the largest eCommerce retailer in the U.S., with an estimated 66.4 million households subscribed to Amazon Prime.  In addition, using their regular account, an Amazon customer can seamlessly order across borders.

There are more than 50 million users in Mexico with orders delivered to 25 cities a day. In Canada, Amazon received 238 million visits in 2020. In Brazil, eCommerce grew by 68% in 2020 over the previous year. That blew away the expected 18% revenue growth that was forecasted for 2021. Indeed, Brazil is considered an up and coming hot market for online shopping to over 80 million Brazilian consumers.

Amazon sellers in the U.S. are tapped into a tremendous marketplace of opportunity. Expanding to other countries in the Americas makes that potential all the more opportune.

Country-Specific Amazon America Stores

Note: Sources for country information include Statista, and  ecommerceDB, as well as Amazon.

United States – Amazon.com

Country Code – US

Amazon accounts for nearly 50 percent of all eCommerce sales in America. It is the leading eCommerce retailer in the U.S. Sixty six percent of Amazon users reported that they relied on Amazon as their primary search engine, with the primary reason for shopping on Amazon being price and low shipping costs.

• Population: 332 Million
• Language: English
• Launched: 1995
• 2020 revenue: $222.6 billion
• Top category: Electronics 

Canada – Amazon.ca

Country Code – CA

Thirty thousand third-party sellers from all 13 Canadian provinces grossed more than $1 billion on Amazon.ca in 2019. It is the leading eCommerce market in Canada, with a market share of about 50 percent.

• Population: 37.9 Million
• Language: English/French
• Launched: 2002
• 2020 revenue: $7391 million
• Top category: Electronics & Media

Mexico – Amazon.com.mx

Country Code – MX

Amazon Mexico has more than 50 million users, delivering orders to 25 cities a day. It is the largest online retailer in Mexico with a market share of 13.4 percent. eCommerce revenue in general is expected to grow by 12.9 percent in 2021.

• Population: 130 Million
• Language: Spanish
• Launched: 2015
• 2020 revenue: $1.4 billion
• Top category: Electronics 

Brazil – Amazon.com.br

Country Code – BR

Amazon began selling books in Brazil in 2012, adding other categories in 2017. Books, specifically ebooks, remain the leading category; 80 percent of all ebooks bought in Brazil are purchased on Amazon. Brazil is also the country with the fastest growth in Amazon Prime subscriptions.

• Population: 214 Million
• Language: Portuguese
• Launched: 2012
• 2020 revenue: $585 million
• Top category: Ebooks

How to Get Started Selling in Amazon America

Amazon provides a four step process for Amazon sellers to expand their business internationally:

1. Decide where and when to sell. Assess the costs to register in a country, the taxes you need to pay against the potential interest in your products in a given country.
2. Register and list in the countries where you want to sell. Keep in mind that products must be listed in the native language of the country you are selling in.
3. Decide on how to ship and fulfill (either FBA or FBM; FBA may be the easiest option, at least to get started, though this is currently not available in Brazil).
4. Manage your business, provide customer support and scale your business.

In other words, it’s not that much different than selling on the U.S. site. Keep in mind that Amazon sellers currently can sell across the United States, Canada and Mexico from one account. You will have to translate your listings into Spanish to sell in Mexico, and into Portuguese to sell in Brazil. Amazon Canada is in English, though there is an option to switch to French. You’ll also need to understand and follow the legal requirements of a particular country.

For more specific instructions, refer to our guidelines on How to Sell Globally on Amazon.

Getting started in these markets with FeedbackWhiz has never been easier. With just the click of a button, you’ll have the expansive functionality of FeedbackWhiz’s powerful tools you’ve come to learn and love ready to penetrate into these markets. 

FeedbackWhiz users now have the ability to fully automate the functionality of Amazon’s Request a Review Button without the unnecessary addition of browser extensions. Now, imagine automating review requests to billions of new customers around the planet in seconds. 

Tips and Reminders on Amazon America

Is expanding into Canada, Mexico and/or Brazil a good idea for your business? We tapped six well-known Amazon experts with one question: What advice can you give to sellers looking to expand into new Amazon marketplaces and sell globally?

Amazon Global Selling is not for everyone. There are many considerations and potential complications to consider before diving in, so it isn’t the sort of program that a seller should join without doing some serious research first. Most businesses that fulfill their own orders and don’t intend on utilizing FBA for international sales probably won’t want to deal with shipping long distances away.

Again, keep in mind that you have to list products in the language of that country’s Amazon marketplace and adhere to all legal regulations. Make sure you fully understand what you are getting into before getting into it.

If you’re considering selling across the Americas with your business, FeedbackWhiz can make your entry so much easier. It provides a range of order and feedback management, Amazon email automation, product review monitoring and notifications and a profits and accounting tool that works in all the Americas marketplaces. Watch a demo. 

Best of all, you can try out the software with a 30-day free trial. FeedbackWhiz is your passport to marketplaces on the two continents of North and South America.

*Editor’s Note: This article on Amazon America was originally published on July 26, 2021. It was updated on July 12, 2022.

Amazon Prime Day is officially in the books, and the event was another massive success for customers and sellers alike. Amazon shoppers bought more than 300 million items during this year’s Prime Day sale, up from roughly 250 million in 2021, making it the biggest Prime Day event in Amazon’s history. There are some rumors there will be a second Prime Day in October, but that doesn’t mean sellers can’t dive in immediately and maximize profits after Prime Day.

Here are five steps on how to maximize profits in the days and weeks following Prime Day.

Five Steps: How to Maximize Profits After Prime Day

1. Generate More Product Reviews

The importance of product reviews on Amazon can never be overstated. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.Having quality reviews in high quantity can separate you from your competition and make first-time buyers that are new to your brand more likely to give your products a shot.

So make sure to take advantage of the uptick in sales that came with Prime Day by requesting a review on each and every sale that you made. One way to go about this is to use the “Request a Review” button on the orders page in your Seller Central. 

But the best and most efficient way to request reviews is Amazon email automation. Whether you decide to create a custom template to send to your customers or to simply press the “Request a Review” button and let Amazon do it for you, FeedbackWhiz will help you schedule and automate the process so that every product review request goes out exactly when you want it to so that you can generate as much new feedback as possible.

2. Readjust Your Prices

Repricing on Amazon is an important thing to do year round. Making sure that your products are competitively priced against your competition but also priced to maximize your profit margin is crucial to long-term success. Re-evaluating your pricing is especially to maximize profits after Prime Day.

For many sellers, quantity is king on Prime Day due to the overwhelming traffic that the event brings. It is often a good strategy to lower prices and profits for the sake of making more sales to boost sales rankings, product reviews, and brand recognition. 

But sellers who forget to set their prices back to normal rates could miss out on profit margins usually generated by those sales. On the other hand, perhaps some products may work better at new or lower price points. Give your shop a nice thorough review to make sure your prices are optimized for a post-Prime Day market.

3. Reassess Your Advertising Spending and Budget

The same goes for advertising. Budgeting for major events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and the holidays is often very different from every-day advertising spending. Some sellers forget to adjust their budget back to normal while others simply do exactly that, setting everything right back to how it was before Prime Day. 

Keep in mind that your sales during Prime Day could have had a major impact on sales rankings, pricing, inventory, and other factors. Something that sold exceptionally well during Prime Day may need less advertising or be worthy of more focus moving forward. On the other hand, a poor seller might require more advertising to boost it or perhaps those funds would be better allocated elsewhere. Study your Amazon ACoS, TACoS and ROAS numbers and decide what advertising strategy makes the most sense moving forward.

4. Correct Inventory Issues

When you think about how to maximize your profits after Prime Day, don’t just only think about sales and advertising. It is imperative that you make sure that your inventory health is in order after the dust settles on Prime Day. Overstocked items can cost you an arm and a leg in storage fees and hurt your IPI scores while understocked items can hurt your bottom line as sold out products can’t generate sales and profits.

Amazon also continually updates their Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) Inventory Performance Index (IPI), and sellers can routinely be charged for storage limit fees. And unfortunately, your IPI history can reflect your current IPI score as Amazon assesses your inventory. Here are some quick tips on inventory management.

Keep a close eye on how your long-term sales have been affected by Prime Day and plan your inventory accordingly.

 

5. Use the Proper Tools to Build a New Digital Campaign Strategy

FeedbackWhiz’s Amazon P&L tool is perfect for crunching numbers to determine the best course of action for your business. By factoring in every element of your business from cost of goods to Amazon fees to advertising spending, you can see exactly how much profit you are making on each individual product, sale, and campaign. Best of all, this data can be viewed in customizable charts that allow you to analyze specific dates and situations.

For example, you could compare your sales on a certain product or category for Prime Day vs. the week that follows. This will allow you to easily visualize which of your products have seen continued growth after Prime Day or which have returned to normal after the event. You can also easily sort your best and worst selling products over different time frames and build strategies around these statistics.

Related: How Prime Day Will Change Your Digital Strategies.

Take advantage of these great tools to maximize profits after Prime Day.

*Editor’s Note: This article to help maximize profits after Prime Day was originally published on Jun 30, 2021. It was updated July 14, 2022.

Prime Day 2022 has come and gone, and while Amazon hasn’t released all of the statistics yet, early reports do indicate that this was the biggest and most successful Amazon Prime Day to date. These early Prime Day digital trends also reveal some interesting statistics that could shape the strategies of Amazon sellers for Q3 and beyond.

Here are four opportunities we see for sellers to take advantage of given these juicy Prime Day digital trends.

Watch: Prime Day Recap – Consumer Insights and Forecasts for Amazon Sellers.

 

Amazon Prime Day Digital Trends: 4 Opportunities for Sellers

1. Add (and Flip!) Smaller, More Inexpensive Products to Your Store

While there were plenty of big-ticket items on sale and highlighted in lightning deals, Numerator data showed that roughly 58% of the orders place on Prime Day were on items under $20. Why is this important? Well, with the recent “stagnation” in the ecom and Amazon industry, this data shows consumers are getting smarter about spending their money.

In a recent poll, 13% of Amazon sellers cited inflation impacting consumer behavior as a top challenge entering Prime Day. Though this year’s Prime Day was the biggest ever, don’t underestimate consumer behavior. Look for these under $20 trends to continue into Q3 and Q4 as buyers get smarter about spending their hard-earned money during this odd period of rising inflation.

2. Start Making Good Use of Digital Bundles Around $50

Reports indicate that Amazon sold a staggering 100,000 items per minute during Prime Day, which is a testament to how much traffic there was on the platform worldwide.

Additionally, Numerator said that the average order during Prime Day was $52.26, up from $44.75 in 2021. Sixty-two percent of those shopping on Amazon during the event placed two or more orders and 16 percent made five or more purchases, according to their research.

Thanks to digital bundles, you no longer have to pre-bundle your inventory before shipping it to fulfillment centers, which gives you the power to experiment with different bundles risk-free. As an example, bundling some of your top-selling products with new or under-performing ones could help make it easier for customers to discover those listings.

Capitalize on Prime Day digital trends one and two by bundling a couple products for around $50, and watch your inventory fly out of warehouses and fulfillment centers in Q3.

3. Use This Time to Make Inventory and Pricing Adjustments

In the days and weeks right after Prime Day, it’s important to comb through your product listings and advertising campaigns to make sure that your inventory and pricing are adjusted accordingly. While many Amazon sellers know to change their prices, inventory allotments and ad campaigns back to normal after Prime Day, it is also important to monitor any changes that Prime Day might have brought on.

It’s possible that certain products may require more inventory, might be worth selling at a different price point, or could be worth investing more ad spending based on their Prime Day performances. Don’t forget to check out our Prime Day Guide for more tips.

 

4. Start Planning for the Second Prime Day

Rumors have been swirling for weeks that Amazon will be announcing a second Prime Day. This second Prime Day is expected to run in the fourth quarter, perhaps in October or early November. Learn from your successes and mistakes from this Prime Day to prepare for the next one.

To give yourself more power to do so, consider an Amazon profits and loss tool to really dive into the numbers on what items in your store had the most success and drove the most profit on Prime Day and the weeks that follow. Be sure to assess seller fees and PPC spend across all your SKUs or ASINs so you can track true profitability of all your products.

And if you notice one or two products’ Prime Day performances are head and shoulders above the rest of your products, then you can work backwards and apply a similar strategy to some of our poorer-performing products across all marketplaces.

 

Prime Day Digital Trends: Amazon Sellers Scored Big

One thing is for certain: third party sellers scored big in this year’s Prime Day. This year was the biggest Prime Day event for Amazon’s selling partners, most of whom are small and medium-sized businesses, whose sales growth in Amazon’s store outpaced Amazon’s retail business.

You can read Amazon’s recent press release to learn more about all the data from Prime Day.