The e-commerce companies with Chinese roots have, for now, replaced Walmart and Target as Amazon’s central competitive focus. TEMU https://temu.com/s/Zybxh3GLNWxdHwv
Amazon.com AMZN 0.26%increase; green up pointing triangle is training its attention on emerging e-commerce players Temu and Shein, viewing the newer platforms as significant threats to its online shopping dominance.
Temu and Shein have, for now, supplanted
Walmart and Target as focal points in internal Amazon meetings related to retail, people familiar with the matter said. The companies with Chinese roots are expanding in the U.S. and targeting Amazon customers. Temu has gone on an advertising blitz, spending billions of dollars and becoming the top advertiser by revenue on Meta Platforms in 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported this month.
Amazon executives are concentrating in part on two aspects of their business they believe will continue to give them a competitive advantage: customer trust and fast delivery. Employees are working to increase the selection of items available for same-day delivery in categories such as electronics, and the company is exploring promotional campaigns that would emphasize reliability and delivery speeds, the people said.
“Amazon’s logistics are unapproachable,” said Josh Lowitz, co-founder of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, which studies Amazon Prime customer habits. “You have to have a whole lot of volume to justify the infrastructure Amazon has, so it’s going to take a long time for anyone to compete with Amazon on reliable convenience.”
An Amazon spokeswoman said the company pays attention to competitors but staff “obsess over customers.” She said that Amazon’s competitive differentiator is its ability to deliver packages quickly across a range of products, a service that remains a priority for the company.
In the U.S., the company can use its massive warehouse network and its millions of Prime subscribers as a barrier to the newer rivals, current and former employees said. Overseas, where those factors are less prevalent, it could be more difficult for the company to defend itself against competitors.
During its three-decade history, Amazon has often moved quickly to counter potential threats from competitors. Those efforts have included price cuts, acquisition offers and replicating strategies that resonate with consumers.
More than a decade ago, as Amazon targeted Quidsi, parent of Diapers.com and Soap.com, it deployed a strategy to undercut the competitor with heavy discounts of diapers on Amazon. Eventually, Quidsi sold itself to Amazon.
Years ago, when Amazon decided to compete with furniture retailer Wayfair, executives created what they called the Wayfair Parity Team, which studied how Wayfair procured, sold and delivered bulky furniture, eventually replicating a majority of its offerings, the Journal previously reported. Amazon declined to comment on the Wayfair team and Quidsi purchase, and it has generally argued that it competes fairly and responds to consumer demand.
In 2014, Amazon launched a service named Prime Now that provided quick deliveries of toiletries and other consumable products. Employees who worked on the service and its custom phone app said it was organized in months after the early buzz from Instacart, which had launched two years before. Prime Now was eventually folded into Amazon’s broader efforts to speed up deliveries for groceries and other products.
While Amazon can be aggressive when faced with new threats, executives at times have tried to avoid overreacting in case new competition is more of a fad than a long-term trend, current and former employees said. E-commerce companies such as Wish, a marketplace selling a variety of products, have broken out and gone on hot streaks but then struggled afterward.
Temu and Shein have seen their popularity rapidly grow in America.
Fuente de nota e imagen: https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazons-new-focus-fending-off-rivals-temu-and-shein-5c6ac205?st=553a3dxc6tkqusd&reflink=article_whatsapp_share