Amazon's foreign trade e-commerce platform is a platform with large traffic among e-commerce platforms. However, after so many years of impact and the impact of many emerging e-commerce platforms, what is the current development status of Amazon's foreign trade? Next, let’s follow the editor to take a look.
What is the current status of Amazon’s foreign trade development?
U.S. online sales are expected to grow 16.6% to $123.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, while offline sales are expected to grow 4.4% to $878.4 billion. Although Amazon is the undisputed king of online sales, it is facing increasing pressure from all sides. First, Walmart has been actively deepening its presence in the retail sector. The company acquired e-commerce platform Jet.com, acquired rich e-commerce resources, and launched same-day delivery services in more than 5,000 stores. Second, other e-commerce platforms such as eBay, Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce are reaping huge benefits by targeting Amazon’s core audience.
Patrick Gauthier, vice president of Amazon Pay, said in a recent interview that Amazon plans to maintain its lead by attracting more Prime users to use Alexa to make voice purchases. He said: "I believe we are at the forefront of voice shopping black technology, which will complement and enhance everything we do."
Although the e-commerce industry has shown tremendous growth momentum in the past few years, the vast majority of consumption still occurs in physical stores. As shown in the above figure, U.S. consumer spending in physical stores accounts for at least 80% of total U.S. consumer retail spending. Data shows that in the short term, sellers who can skillfully combine online shopping and face-to-face shopping are likely to become the next winners to reap profits.
According to the latest data from payment-related marketing company Cardlytics (pictured above), online and mobile shopping channels account for about 20% of total spending in the United States, of which 12% comes from pure e-commerce sellers and 8% comes from omnichannel sellers that support both online and in-store sales. Cardlytics said that sales at purely physical retail stores in the United States fell about 2% last year, while sales at pure e-commerce increased 1.5% and sales at omnichannel retailers increased 0.2%.
It is reported that e-commerce platform provider BigCommerce conducted a survey of 3,000 digital consumers from the United States, the United Kingdom and the Asia-Pacific region from August 2 to 5, 2018. The survey results show that Amazon is the most popular online shopping destination for consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. But consumers are extremely mobile when it comes to shopping, and that poses a threat to Amazon in the long run.
78% of consumers worldwide said they had purchased something from Amazon in the past six months, while 65% had shopped in a physical store during the same period. 45% of consumers said they have purchased items from online sellers, 34% said they have purchased on eBay, and others said they have purchased on Facebook (11%), Instagram (6%) and Snapchat (4%). The rise of “social shopping” that offers payment options through social media platforms, such as Shopify, which offers Venmo as a payment method, could challenge Amazon’s dominance. BigCommerce’s survey shows that about one-third of consumers have seen the same product on Amazon before purchasing it elsewhere, and 22% of consumers have searched for the same product on the brand’s official website before purchasing it on Amazon. “As humans, we are easily distracted, so sellers need to adapt their sales strategies to the consumers’ circuitous shopping behaviors,” said Jimmy Duvall, Chief Product Officer at BigCommerce.
Amazon and other e-commerce sellers will need to address more pain points to accelerate growth. According to BigCommerce’s survey on consumer dissatisfaction with online shopping, 27% of consumers are disappointed that they cannot try products in advance. New technology aims to solve this problem through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools, but it is still in the early stages of development.
Shipping costs are another major pain point that e-commerce sellers try to overcome in their marketing and offers, with 18% of consumers unhappy about having to pay for shipping out of their own pocket. Another 15% of consumers are dissatisfied with the length of time they have to wait to receive their goods, but sellers are also addressing this issue by shortening delivery times, offering same-day delivery or in-store pickup services. Surprisingly, payment options rank as a lower-ranked pain point for consumers compared to other online shopping issues. In the BigCommerce survey, only 5% of consumers found entering payment and shipping data cumbersome, and only 3% said limited payment options were a problem that needed to be addressed. Even online shopping fraud was a less serious concern for consumers, with only 7% of respondents mentioning the issue.
