Good Australian e-commerce sites are very few and far between. I came to Australia nearly seven years ago and expected the revolution I had seen in the US and UK arrive here a year or so after I left...but I waited...and waited and still am for the appearance of good online stores.
Yes there are a few pioneers out there and they are improving, but it's super slow. Large global brands within no online stores? Dead common here. On the whole they are just a sad and poor comparison to their US counterparts. Target and Toys'R'Us launched 'stores' within the last year and well, a bit sad. Add in the vast overcharging on products we get, high shipping costs, and a dreadful, nay pitiful stock range and it really is quite depressing.
It wasn't helped by total all out farcical events like 'Click Frenzy' which only made us all more embarrassed. Maybe we were just all out having a barbecue and not shoppers with better things to do? No, we are in fact THE most frequent online shoppers worldwide, but at global sites and not our own. We basically gave Ozzie retailers a report card that said 'F- Don't even bother trying harder'. And as a nation we just seemed to hide continually behind these terrible sites and printed paper catalogues, and do nothing... and then...
Boom.
+Amazon.com finally launches in Australia after a three year ongoing development, and here is where the line has been drawn and it will all start to finally change. Their amazon.com.au site kicked off a few hours ago, and currently like other recent satellite sites such as Amazon Brazil, the site only currently stocks books and it's Kindle devices.
Wisely it knows it's audience and unlike others, has try to avoid shafting customers as if they are utterly blind to shopping overseas, (as many do) and has so far avoided the price hikes we are normally stung for here. Prices are reasonable with only a small margin between USD and AUD products.
For now.
The real truth will come if we ever get even 10% of the range of products the US site gets, and why should it bother when it's highest profit margin items such as digital books will do very well here indeed (and already are). Amazon are not daft in any shape or form, Jeff Bezos almost redefines shrewd, and has defied analysts predictions for years. He knows this market is riper than ripe, and he has cleverly started to show his hand.
Where he has gone others will soon follow, and with our high dollar, and the job ramp up in Amazon's Sydney base, we'll soon see a full store and more products because boy, speaking as a consumer, we really need it here.
If I'm right (which I've harped on about for many years) it will finally give Australia the much deserved royal kick up the digital backside it needs, and begin to fire off other companies to at last, start building some decent ecommerce stores and putting an end to those paper catalogues.
No comments:
Post a Comment