AMAZON NEWS: THE AMAZON ANALYTICS INSIDER AUGUST 2023
Your biweekly resource to staying informed on the news and obstacles currently affecting other vendors and sellers. Stay attuned to potential changes that might affect your business and focus on recommended reports, chosen in light of current events in order to empower your data-driven decisions.
TL;DR
Amazon's Q2 was highly successful with larger growth anticipated in Q4. With economic hardship ahead, they'll focus on cutting costs and investing in new areas, Ie. advertising.
Sellers report extreme measures of cutting costs in fulfillment centers - such as Amazon shipping pet food without a box.
"Prime Big Deals Day" to take place October 2023.
Sellers can now offer "Loyal Customer Discounts".
Listing updates made by Vendors are meeting resistance from Amazon.
Amazon Q2 Performance + Projections
Source: 1
Amazon's second-quarter earnings exceeded analyst expectations, with revenue rising 11% to $134.4 billion.
AWS revenue grew 12% to $22.1 billion, accounting for 70% of Amazon's operating profit.
Amazon's advertising business also grew, with sales reaching $10.7 billion this past quarter.
Amazon also had the largest layoffs in company history, cutting 27,000 jobs since last fall.
Q3 sales are projected to be between $138 billion and $143 billion in Q3, equating to a growth of 9% to 13%.
Amazon had a strong second quarter, with revenue and profit exceeding analyst expectations. However, there's some rough winds ahead with inflation and slowing economic growth. To address this, they're aggressively cutting costs and investing in new areas, such as advertising.
Amazon Cutting Costs with Packing Quality
Source: 1
Amazon's definition of cutting costs largely translates to passing down more costs down to sellers.
Sellers are currently responsible for the safety of their items when using FBA, even though these orders are packaged and shipped by amazon.
One seller expressed frustration as Amazon used to box up their pet food bags before shipping them out. Recently Amazon has resorted to sticking a label on the bag of food and sending it out. This results in multiple cases of damaged returns. As a result, another seller recommended you should be prepared for your product to survive being dropped from the empire state building or being ran over by a forklift.
Report Recommendation: Order Fulfillment
“Prime Big Deals Day” l October 2023
Last month's prime day was the most successful in company history - this prompted Amazon to announce Prime Big Deal Days, AKA Prime day 2.0 to take place in October of this year.
Loyal Customer Discounts
Source: 1
On the first of this month, Amazon announced that sellers will now be able to offer loyalty discounts, ranging from 10-50% off all products to their -"loyal"- customers, with the term loyal being defined as the following:
Brand Followers: Customers who follow your brand on Amazon
Repeat Customers: Customers who ordered your product more than 1x in the past year
Recent Customers: The most recent customers who purchased from you
High-Spend Customers: The highest-spending customers in the past year
Potential New Customers: New customers who added to cart recently, but have not purchased in the past year
Cart Abandoners: Customers who have your products in their cart, but haven’t purchased in the last three months.
Report Recommendation: Order Report Fulfilled by Amazon
Vendor Listings Rejecting Updates
Listing management continues to be a pain point for some vendors as many on Linkedin ask for advice what to do when the updates they make on the backend of their listing don't always seem to surface on the customer side, or revert back after some time.
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