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As Amazon invests heavily in building new warehouses, leasing planes and hiring thousands of delivery workers, a new partnership with BigCommerce partnership offers a path for Amazon to monetize its new shipping capacity -- all using a carrier model not so dissimilar from a UPS or FedEx.
A new feature that Amazon started rolling out in June allows sellers to send messages -- scripted by the company -- to customers who leave one-, two- or three-star reviews of their products. That gives sellers the chance to respond to negative reviews is a strategic move for Amazon, as it once again battles a fresh round of scrutiny over fake reviews -- and it might let sellers keep their star ratings high without turning to paid reviews.
Amazon's new climate badges, launched last September, have failed to make waves among sellers after their initial rollout. While they do hold promise for attracting new customers, even sellers that have received the necessary certifications are struggling to actually receive the climate badges.
Anycart, which opened its doors to customers everywhere in May after undergoing beta tests stretching back to 2019, is a marginal player for now, but it captures a new, growing consensus for how to inspire people to make more impulse purchases online: build a platform for shoppable recipes.
Autonomous trucking might help Amazon with driver recruitment. The technology isn't just for the relatively pie-in-the-sky future of a fully driverless truck, but also for shorter-term demands, where certain parts of the trucking process can be automated in order to make the industry more attractive to drivers.
Despite offering competing sales, retailers are struggling to put a dent in Amazon's Prime Day momentum. Multi-category big box retailers like Walmart and Target, as well as Wayfair and Best Buy, all ran sales that overlapped with Amazon's June 21 to 22 Prime Day. Still, early data in app downloads and web traffic shows that these retailers are still seeing a modest uptick in shoppers relative to Amazon.
Most analysts don’t mark the beginning of back-to-school season until mid-July. According to one estimate, only 17.1% of back-to-school purchases typically happen in June, compared to 42.2% in August. But the new timing of Prime Day seems on track to jumpstart the season early.
Amazon is known for its in-house electronics products. But this year, it gave its private-label products in its other categories an extra push. That underscores the extent to which Amazon is pushing specifically its non-electronics products -- which, unlike electronics, might inspire more frequent repeat purchases -- into consumers’ lives.
The recently-introduced Inform bills are essentially disclosure measures, stating that third-party marketplaces have to vet the bank information, government IDs, tax documents and other records pertaining to what the bill classifies as “high-volume third-part sellers.” Here's how these proposed laws could upend the e-commerce ecosystem.
Over the last year, influencer-created videos have increasingly popped up on Amazon product pages. With these videos, Amazon is trying to bring some of the cues from social platforms onto its own site -- and rather than have its influencers only recommend products on YouTube or TikTok, and just link back to Amazon, now Amazon is trying to bring more content natively onto its platform.
As the Amazon acquisition boom continues, a growing number of companies are beginning to consider how -- and whether -- to turn the products they acquire into recognizable brands even off of Amazon. But question of how present the actual name of the rollup company should be in the minds of consumers also remains up in the air. “At this point, we have delivered products to one out of every ten households in America, but they have no idea that we’ve done that,” said Josh Silberstein, founder and co-CEO of Thrasio.
One of the biggest storylines of this year’s Prime Day is inventory problems. Toward the end of May, third-party sellers began reporting that their inventory maximums had dropped suddenly -- meaning, essentially, that Amazon would only accept a reduced amount of inventory into its warehouses.
Last week, the e-commerce rollup space got one of its biggest endorsements yet when the SoftBank Vision Fund led a $775 million investment round in Perch, a Boston-based rollup company that has been active since January 2020. Modern Retail talked to Chris Bell, a former Wayfair executive who is now founder and CEO of Perch, about how he is thinking about standing out in such a crowded market.
Last week, Karl Racine, attorney general for the District of Columbia, filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon’s own policies were forcing sellers to set prices that are artificially high on platforms other than Amazon. The case centers on Amazon’s Fair Pricing Policy -- the rule in which Amazon states that prices on its platform should be lower than in other stores (sometimes called a “most-favored nation” clause). Here are a few key things to know about the case.
Amazon is continuing to try and enter the cloud gaming space. But it isn't the only one. Here's why retailers and platforms are making investments in it.
Away's new line is yet another sign that retailers are catering to new travel habits, which involve an increasing amount of car trips, close-to-home getaways, and outdoor adventures.
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