E-commerce giant Amazon is set to debut in Australia this week bringing with it all the wonderful things customers across the globe associate with the company.
At the moment, Australians have been able to order Amazon’s Kindle e-reader and access cloud services. However, with the establishment of an official Amazon warehouse outside Melbourne, Aussie customers will soon have access to products like the Amazon Echo, home to Alexa, and the company’s grocery delivery service, AmazonFresh.
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This is going to be tough news for the country’s domestic retailers. According to the Financial Times, Morgan Stanley calculated that an Amazon arrival could affect the retail sector’s earnings by almost AUS$600m in the next 10 years.
Amazon reportedly emailed sellers using its Amazon Marketplace that it will be launching to a small number of customers on 23 November in Australia. At the end of the email, Amazon says “let’s make history”.
It’s interesting that Amazon is going to be launching on the most-celebrated of all shopping days, Black Friday.
Once there is Amazon in Australia, where else could the company expand?
Surprisingly, Amazon isn’t available in that many places. Once it launches in Australia, it will have branches in a total of 14 markets. Admittedly, these are some of the biggest markets including the US, the UK, China, India, and Brazil.
Yet, there is a large number of countries without their own Amazon branch. In Europe, Amazon is available in Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands – basically covered Western Europe. But that leaves out nearly 40 other countries, mainly in Eastern Europe. This includes Russia, Ukraine and the whole of Scandinavia.
North America is the only continent completely covered by Amazon. South America is mainly left out, aside from Brazil.
It’s clear that Amazon is concentrating its growth in the Asia-Pacific region, with the addition of Australia to the mix alongside China, India, Singapore, and Japan. This could be in order to offset the growth from companies such as Alibaba.
As well, even though Amazon is considered to be the world’s largest online retailer, it has zero presence in Africa. It’ll be interesting to see when Amazon will plan its Africa expansion as a result.
