The end of the year and the beginning of the year have always been the time for Internet manufacturers to "do things", and recently Amazon China suddenly made a big news. On December 28, Amazon China issued the "Prime Member Notice" and the "Overseas Purchase Revision Notice", announcing adjustments to Prime members and overseas purchase services. The main content is that a new version of the "Amazon Shopping" app, the existing Amazon, will be launched in January next yearCN will no longer support the shopping function, and Prime members will stop registering from now on.
A more localized mobile shopping experience will bring more value to our customers", which is undoubtedly the key to Amazon China's determination to launch the new version of the "Amazon Shopping" app. And the official said, "We will continue to evaluate our products and services and make regular adjustments to meet the changing needs of customers." To this end, we will upgrade the shopping experience of Amazon Overseas Shopping to meet the needs of Chinese customers for mobile shopping. Starting January 27, 2024, Amazon Overseas will further embrace the mobile shopping trend and launch a new version'Amazon shopping'app。”
Amazon China has reached a moment where it has to change", this is the evaluation of an Amazon cross-border e-commerce seller. That's right, Amazon China's previous market competition strategy has become less and less suitable for the current situation of the domestic e-commerce market.
Let's start with Amazon's proud Prime membership. The Prime member, which was launched as early as 2005, is also the core component of Amazon's flywheel theory, and the huge rights and interests it provides are the inspiration of many "joint members" in China, even Ali's 88VIP is no exception.
But the problem is that the domestic Prime membership is not the same thing as the overseas version at all. In addition to the annual Prime Membership Day, members-only discounts, and free shipping on unlimited overseas purchases throughout the year, there are almost no other benefits such as Prime Vedio, Prime Gaming, Prime Music, Kindle eBooks**, Prime Photos, and more. Amazon China's Prime membership is basically an overseas shopping membership service wearing a Prime jacket, and only overseas purchases with the "Prime" logo can enjoy free shipping services.
If the abandonment of Prime members is a matter of being interrupted and not disturbed, then AmazonCN does not provide shopping services, which is more like "what to do in the morning". In the words of one netizen, "Amazon's first-class design fully proves that Amazon China really relies on goods and services to occupy a place in the domestic B2C market."
It is true that Amazon is the pioneer of the global e-commerce platform, but Amazon's **UI seems to be stuck forever twenty years ago. For a long time, Amazon's China page has been copied from the English version, and even the language has not been localized in the slightest.
Of course, the core reason is that the shopping behavior of domestic consumers has changed, and more and more consumers choose to use smartphones instead of computers to shop online, which can be seen from the live broadcast e-commerce of platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, so the launch of the new "Amazon Shopping" app is also the result of Amazon China catering to domestic consumers. At the same time, Amazon China should also find that it is difficult to adapt to the current competitive landscape of the e-commerce industry in the domestic market by continuing to copy overseas pages directly to the Chinese market.
In the past two years, the tide of overseas shopping has obviously ebbed. Previously, in the summer of 2022, the "old player" of the cross-border e-commerce track, Yang Wharf, announced that the capital chain was broken, and the cross-border maternal and child e-commerce platform Miya APP stopped serving. And the reason for all this is not complicated, so the epidemic has dealt a fatal blow to overseas shopping.
Everyone may have seen similar news, during the epidemic period, containers are "hard to find", shipping capacity is tight, freight rates are high, and the most important mode of transportation in the world is sea transportation, so this point directly and fundamentally hits the living space of overseas shopping. After all, after placing an order, it feels terrible to see that the goods you bought are halfway around the world but do not move, and you don't know when you will receive the goods. Under the trade-off, after overseas shopping was restricted due to objective conditions, the purchasing power of domestic consumers also remained in China.
Regardless of the fact that the epidemic has only lasted for 3 years, it is enough to change the habits of most consumers. In this regard, Amazon China's strategy is to deepen localization, and it is reported that the new version of the "Amazon Shopping" app will incorporate more localized elements and page design to make the shopping experience more efficient and smooth.
However, compared with whether the design of the new version of the app can be accurate to the pulse of domestic users, the vast majority of friends may be concerned about another question, that is, after there is no Prime member, how to deal with the shipping cost of overseas purchases, whether to keep the current "free shipping for non-members over 300 yuan" unchanged, or Amazon directly concessions and comprehensive free shipping
Turn the page in 2023