You heard it right. It’s finally happening. Amazon is coming to Scandinavia. It’s been on a rumor-base for literally years that the platform almost every e-commerce retailer fears is coming to a country-level domain near you. If you’re from Scandinavia, this is no longer just speculation, as the platform has actually been launched.
Swedish people get the option to choose from more than 150 million products, and more than 10.000 webshops are expected to have their business placed on the amazon platform in Sweden. How this will affect the existing eCommerce is still uncertain.
A short while after Amazon announced that they were coming to Sweden, a 15.000 square meter large warehouse just outside of Stockholm, in the city of Eskilstuna, was being prepared for storage and shipping. It’s a logistic center that’s confirmed to be handling all deliveries in Sweden. With this kind of investment, Amazon is surely expected to influence the Swedish market hugely. This global amazon marketplace is notorious for having a broad assortment, low prices, and fast delivery.
There’s another giant amazon-logistics center, 62.000 square meters wide, just across the borders of Denmark, in Germany. This logistic center is four times as large as its location near Stockholm, in Sweden. The location near the borders of Denmark strongly signals that Denmark might be their next target, right after Sweden.
The biggest selling point from Amazon is, not surprisingly, price. If you’re a seller from Amazon and don’t have competitive price positions for your products, you’ll not get very far. A study from Boston Consulting Group shows how Amazon’s algorithm is prioritizing the placement of their advertisers based on their price-points. The algorithm is always working and scanning the price of all the products on the platform, ensuring that customers get the most up-to-date prices available, which are not surprisingly also the cheapest ones.
It’s tough to compete against Amazon if you’re not pricing yourself similarly low and/or have a high rate of customer service. You’ll need to compete against their price positions to survive in the market. A way to do so is by using dynamic pricing. PriceShape Software provides you an overview of the competitive situation in the market and makes you prepared to face the giant.