The 2.0 version of Amazon China’s overseas shopping service will not only be a bonded stocking service, but also upgrades in terms of shopping experience and category expansion. In terms of shopping experience, Amazon China has upgraded and basically realized the localization of overseas shopping services in terms of accounts and payments; in terms of category expansion, Amazon’s direct mail business of 25 categories in the United States has been fully connected, and the products of Amazon’s European and Japanese sites are also being further expanded.
It can be seen that Amazon China is expanding its overseas shopping business in an orderly manner and giving full play to its advantages in supply and warehousing. In terms of supply, as of February 2016, Amazon has opened 13 sites around the world outside of China, including the United States, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany and other countries, with the number of online products reaching hundreds of millions. In terms of warehousing, Amazon has more than 100 operating centers around the world with a high degree of intelligence, and shares data through global cloud warehouses to achieve global visual tracking and query of packages.
This means that in terms of overseas shopping business, Amazon China does not need to build investment promotion teams and overseas warehousing bases in various places abroad like other peers.
Traffic is the core of e-commerce. Compared with Alibaba’s Tmall Global and JD’s Global Shopping, Amazon’s shortcoming lies in traffic. Although Amazon has been working in China for more than ten years, its traffic is far behind its competitors, so much so that Amazon has opened an official flagship store on Tmall. It is precisely because of the lack of traffic that Amazon’s overseas shopping business has handled a total of 114,100 orders from November 2014 to April 2015, with a total value of only 31.85 million yuan.
So, how can Amazon solve the traffic dilemma? Perhaps, the overseas shopping business itself is designed to increase Amazon’s traffic. It should be noted that the pattern of domestic e-commerce traffic has basically been determined. Only by seizing the cross-border e-commerce trend and building itself into a unique import cross-border e-commerce platform through its existing overseas supply and warehousing advantages can Amazon subvert the existing traffic pattern.
The dividends of the cross-border e-commerce trend will not last long, and there are not many opportunities left for Amazon’s overseas shopping. To be “unique”, Amazon Global Shopping must make prices lower, product categories richer, shopping experience more convenient, and cross-border delivery faster. If this is achieved, even if Amazon China cannot overturn the existing e-commerce traffic structure, it will certainly make a qualitative leap in its own business.