What is the 'anti-Amazon alliance' that rebels against the world's largest EC site, Amazon?



Ben Thompson, who runs the business blog

Stratechery , points out that an 'anti-Amazon alliance' is being established to compete with Amazon.com, the world's largest online shopping site.

The Anti-Amazon Alliance – Stratechery by Ben Thompson
https://stratechery.com/2020/the-anti-amazon-alliance/

The AIDA model proposed by American psychologist Edward Strong, which models the transition of consciousness until consumers buy, divides the psychological changes when customers purchase goods into the following four stages. Thing.

1: Attention (Attention: Attract customers' attention)
2: Interest (Interest: appealing to customers and attracting attention)
3: Desire (Consciousness : Convince customers that they have a desire for a product and that it brings satisfaction)
4: A ction (action: make customers take action)

As an example of incorporating the AIDA model, Mr. Thompson cites Swiffer 's TV commercial released in 1999.

Swiffer ad, 1999-YouTube


First of all, it appeals that traditional cleaning methods such as vacuum cleaners and brooms do not completely clean the inside of the house, and make the dirt worse, 'attracting the customer's attention'.




To solve this problem, it is necessary to remove all dirt, and Swiffer is proposed as a method. This is the stage of 'appealing the product to customers and attracting attention'.



Swiffer makes it easy to clean the whole house.




You can use it as it is for cleaning.



At the end, cleaning is completed simply by throwing away the Swiffer. We appeal the strengths of our products to raise the 'customer's desire for products'.




At the end, the product was once again appealed and the TV commercial ended.



The final 'action for customers' stage is not in the TV commercial, but in a physical store that sells Swiffers such as supermarkets. Looking at the swifters on the shelves of the store, the customer moves to the final 'take the customer action' stage. Swiffer's promotion did not succeed only with TV commercials, but as a result of various factors such as publicity activities on multiple media and distribution of coupons, `` The fact that AIDA model was compressed to 45 seconds TV CM I found it very helpful in explaining this model and gave it as an example, 'says Thompson.

Swiffer's distributor, P & G, made Swiffer one of the most popular cleaning tools by controlling the shelves in supermarkets, but it can't control almost unlimited resources of the internet, so the internet flourishes. It must be said that it is very difficult to publicize products in the same way as it is today.

Selling a product on the Internet requires the customer to recognize the brand and enter the brand name in the search box, which is a much more difficult task than 'monopolizing a supermarket shelf.' , The time and money needed for brand recognition is much greater. Also, for example, in order to incorporate prospective customers who searched for 'laundry detergent', it is necessary to line up products in the top of the search results, but in order to do so, it is necessary to sell many products, in other words, 'There are many products. There is a problem that if the sales fall in the category that does, the search results will deteriorate and it will be disadvantageous.

In the internet age, Thompson argues that 'the biggest brand is Amazon' for each brand that competes vigorously with its product sales strategy. The reason is very simple, because many people who shop on the Internet search and purchase products on Amazon. According to research data from market research company

eMarketer , when online shopping, 49% of users actually do word search on Amazon, and only 22% of people search on Google.

Focusing only on the field of online shopping, Amazon is a search engine above Google, and it is still responsible for everything from selling and delivering products. Therefore, 'I understand why Amazon has been focusing on selling private brands for several years now,' says Thompson.

In addition, as reported as 'Amazon decides products to handle based on sales data on the marketplace', Amazon collects not only its own sales data but also sales data of third party vendors, and it is a private brand It is reported that they have decided which products to handle.

It is reported that Amazon decides which products to handle based on sales data on the market place-GIGAZINE



Taking all these facts together, Mr. Thompson points out that 'it is almost impossible to compete with Amazon, which has such enormous power, in the field of online shopping.'



However, Mr. Thompson points out the existence that can be called 'anti-Amazon alliance' against such Amazon. One of the leaders of the anti-Amazon alliance is Thompson's list of e-commerce platform Shopify . At first glance Shopify doesn't look like an Amazon competitor. Because customers don't buy products on the official Shopify website. However, 'There are 218 million users who purchased products from Shopify without even knowing that Shopify exists,' Thompson points out. Shopify is a platform that provides an online shopping site for 820,000 third-party vendors, rather than interacting directly with customers, with more than 200 million users purchasing products from these third-party vendors. reason.

It is pointed out that it is a `` true platform '' with variety that defeats the strongest predator Amazon-GIGAZINE



However, even if a service that helps build an EC site such as Shopify or a major supermarket chain such as Walmart tries to compete with Amazon on its own, it will compete against platforms such as Amazon that carry out `` search '' and `` sales '' at once Very difficult to do. What is important here is Google, which has a 22% share in “searching online shopping”.

On April 21, 2020, Google announced that it will be able to register products displayed on Google Shopping , a product price search service, for free. According to ITmedia NEWS , after 2012, retailers had to register products for a fee in the Google Merchant Center in order to display products on Google Shopping.

List your products on Google Shopping for free-The Keyword



Google said, 'Many of the physical stores are temporarily closed due to the new coronavirus pandemic, making online shopping a lifeline for retailers. Also, consumers are increasing their online shopping, only daily necessities Not just the demand for toys, apparel, household items, etc. This is an opportunity for companies struggling to maintain relationships with consumers, but many companies can afford to start online shopping. No, so Google is working on making it possible to display products in search results for free, specifically from next week it will be free for search results to appear on Google's shopping tab. You will be able to: Consumers regardless of whether the seller is advertising on Google It noted and it is possible to appeal the goods ', in which online shopping demand increases due to the influence of the new coronavirus, retailers announced that it will be able to register the goods for free.

Google says it is a change affected by the new coronavirus, but Thompson said, 'This has nothing to do with the new coronavirus. What this change really means is lack of anti-Amazon alliance The important point was that it was a supplement. '

Google not only allows free registration of product information displayed on Google Shopping, but by partnering with companies such as Shopify and WooCommerce, even small retailers can easily appeal products to customers via Google I am cooperating with you. Thompson points out that this partnership is 'a sign that Amazon's influence is growing.'

In 2017, Google Shopping was ordered by the European Commission to pay fines for violating antitrust laws. However, Mr. Thompson criticizes the European Commission's judgment as 'wrong' as 'Amazon is more dominant in online shopping than in the market'.

In addition, Mr. Thompson pointed out to third party companies with differentiated products and brands, 'We should leave the platform called Amazon as soon as possible.' With Google Shopping freeing up product registration, this process is easier than ever.

in Web Service,   Video, Posted by logu_ii