Amazon Prime lands in Brazil, moving the marketplace ahead of the local pack

Amazon Prime has officially landed in the largest country of South America extending its footprint in Brazil as the marketplace aims to outmanoeuvre the local competition, setting themselves forth to gain momentum in the territory beyond the West.

The £79 a year loyalty programme is enjoyed by more than 100 million paid members across 18 countries – adding Brazil as the 19th market to benefit from the unlimited accelerated delivery service, from baby to kitchen to electronics, books, and more, with no minimum purchase amount – along with the perks including Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading, Twitch Prime, and exclusive deals.

“Prime is the only membership program in Brazil that combines unlimited free country-wide delivery and award-winning digital entertainment benefits. Prime is designed to make the lives of members a little simpler, more convenient, and more fun every day. And this is Day One. We will continue to make the program better in order to keep delighting customers in Brazil.”
– Jamil Ghani, vice president, marketing international, Prime.

The move will see merchants trading on Amazon.com.br marketplace offering the eligible Prime subscribers a faster ‘free’ delivery in their efforts to woo shoppers away from local rivals including Argentinian marketplace, MercadoLibre which boasts free delivery on items above a certain price.

Their marketplace counterpart, Latin American retailer, B2W may add fuel to the competitive fire with their Prime equivalent last-mile service which offers free shipping, making it somewhat a tougher mission for Amazon to lure loyal shoppers away from B2W to their platform. However, Amazon boasts a large selection and many other perks, other ecommerce players simply can afford to offer, which may serve as a competitive edge now that their membership programme enters the South American scene.