A big promotional event to get more customers excited about @Amazon Australia was not an overwhelming success, according to research. Amazon Prime Day on Amazon Australia specifically didn’t generate as many new subscriptions to Prime as expected. One of the biggest problems during the promotional event that started on 24th July and lasted for 36 hours was a series of technical glitches experienced by shoppers.
Research from Starcom suggest that visits to Amazon in Australia increased 68% to 3.2 million and they say that visits to the Prime pages also increased 324% and sign-ups to the 30-day free trial surged by 377%. But the number of people who maintained their subscription was not as great as anticipated and one of the issues is the nature of the Prime offering down under.
Our research has found that Australians are increasingly positive towards Amazon, are thinking differently about Amazon and visit the site with a shopping mission in mind. It is the online shopping experience, however, and the reduced Prime Australia offering, that are holding back Amazon’s growth here. Starcom believes Amazon will need to bring a US-style Prime offer to Australia in order to drive Prime membership to a significant degree, and that by doing so, Amazon will accelerate growth to a degree that significantly impacts Australian retail.
Nicole Conroy, research director, Starcom
Prime in Australia specifically doesn’t offer Prime Music, Prime Photo, the number of items eligible for free delivery or Amazon Key. There is also the problem of buying internationally which does mean that the Australian site doesn’t offer quite the number of goods as elsewhere
The problem down under has been the extension of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) which means imported goods are subject to the levy. Amazon’s way of dealing with this has been to prevent Australians visiting other international Amazon to shop. It is possible that Amazon Australia would probably benefit from revisiting this decision to boost the marketplace.
2 Responses
i felt amazon might have a tough time offering prime delivery to oz.
i’m sure they’re used to it in Australia, if you live out in the bush your parcel takes ages to arrive, if you live in the big cities you can have it now.
Amazon Prime doesn’t seem to be offering an improvement on that scenario, i had a look at their sales patter and it’s rather un-inspiring compared to what they promise here.
“Nearly 90% of australians can potentially get a parcel in as fast as 2 business days, after shipping, in many cases.”
doesn’t really chime compared to
“Unlimited next-day delivery!”
once (if) they sort the drones out though…..
I presume they could offer Prime based on location? And therefore could guarantee it to whatever % of the population is urban (I assume this is where the money is as well?)