Stay in Touch
For Amazon sellers, account managers have been considered a lifeline -- the real people on the other end who can cut through the black box of selling on Amazon to field questions and offer support for individual sellers’ needs
As Amazon's Prime Day expands from one, then one-and-a-half, to two days (taking place this year on July 15 and 16), retailers are bulking up their competitive defense strategies as well. This year, Target, Nordstrom, Walmart, eBay, and a slew of others announced a series of deals on the same days as Prime Days. More retailers are participating in the mid-summer sales event than in the past, too: RetailMeNot estimates that this year over 250 competitors will be offering some form of deals this summer, up from 194 last year.
Amazon may be the only retailer with an event called Prime Day, but competitors are capitalizing on the growing name recognition of Prime Day among U.S. shoppers to promote their own sales events. No one is calling their sales event Prime Day outright, but other retailers are alluding to Amazon's annual two-day sales event in their marketing and promotional copy.
On Thursday, Amazon announced Counter, a new service that will allow customers to pick up Amazon packages from select retailers' stores. Amazon's initial launch partner for Counter in the U.S. is Rite Aid. But in its press release, the e-commerce giant said that it's "actively looking to bring additional partners onboard, including small to midsize businesses and other large chains." It's indicative of the power Amazon still holds over brick-and-mortar retailers.
Amazon has rolled out a series of new initiatives this year to help tackle its marketplace’s counterfeit and unauthorized seller problem head-on in an effort to protect brands and customers. But thanks to a slurry of fast-changing rules, a lack of clear communication and automated product sweeps, third-party marketplace sellers are getting caught in the fray and losing out on sales.
It’s not Amazon’s existence or cut-throat competitive strategies that have sealed the fate of other retailers that are losing market share, like JCPenney, Bed Bath & Beyond and Sears. Instead, it was a series of executional and strategic missteps over a critical window of time during which today’s better-equipped competitors were taking action in areas like e-commerce and logistics as well as experiences and services.
Subscription models are no simple business: The cost of customer acquisition, customer fatigue and churn are hurdles for growth. Now, that difficulty to scale is bringing direct-to-consumer brands and Amazon closer together.
Companies like Vantage BP, MarkMonitor and CompuMark are brand enforcers-for-hire, promising to monitor marketplaces like Amazon for counterfeits, price violations, unauthorized resellers, IP infringements and gray market sellers for brand manufacturers.
After two months of turbulence, thousands of Amazon vendors could be back on the chopping block.
It’s earnings week, and retailers are dealing with a universal truth: It's sink or swim in an industry increasingly dominated by Amazon and Walmart.
Walmart’s e-commerce business continues to grow at double-digit rates.
On Amazon, positive reviews are as good as gold, and sellers are building strategies around them.
PopSockets claims that unauthorized sellers on online marketplaces, specifically Amazon, are damaging the brand's reputation by selling faulty products.
Target Media Network is now Roundel, as the retailer guns to remodel its ad business after Amazon’s.
Customers are searching Amazon for brand-name items like “Allbirds sneakers” and “Away travel luggage,” and finding copycat products in their place.
A growing number of health and beauty brands are turning to cloud-based systems that can handle customer, financial and inventory data across all processes, from production to payment.
Payless ShoeSource has come out of its latest bankruptcy proceedings with big plans to relaunch in the U.S. It's provided scant details about what that would look like. But with all of its U.S. locations closed, a large brand and business overhaul will be necessary to keep the retailer alive.
Read MoreAt the Modern Retail Summit, we’ll bring together hundreds of senior retail marketers to discuss the challenges they’re facing and the solutions they’re seeking in the era of smarter retail.
Buy Passes
