Faced with tough competition from rivals Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (NYSE:BABA), eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) and Wish.com, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) is depending on its Prime subscription service to woo customers with faster delivery.
The Seattle-based online retailer has notified various suppliers that sell light items – such as USB cables, smartphone screen protectors, cosmetics and other small, flat items – will be delivered to Amazon Prime members in 5 business days, down from 8 previous. The move was meant to push against competing marketplaces that help overseas manufacturers and suppliers sell directly to US customers.
Quick delivery has always been Amazon’s strongest suit. The online retailer has dominated the US online shopping market because of its fast delivery, enabling Amazon to distinguish itself in cross-border e-commerce. A report by digital research marketing firm eMarketer, showed that US online customers will likely spend about $30 billion on cross-border transactions this year, which is a 10% increase from last year. The report also noted that China is the leading source of merchandise purchased online in the US market.
Amazon’s push for faster delivery time comes two months after the e-commerce giant reduced shipping fees charged to merchants that sell items through the company’s ‘Fulfillment By Amazon Small and Light’ program. The program, which was introduced in 2015, provides free shipping with no minimum order size on thousands of popular small items that retails for $10 and below.
“I expect the small and light program to explode in volume,” said Neil Ackerman, a former Amazon executive who started the program and now heads e-commerce initiatives at Mondelez International. “Wish.com and other marketplaces won’t be able to compete with Amazon when it comes to speed or customer service.”
For added measure, Amazon is continuously working to refine its small and light delivery system to help Chinese merchants ship items directly to US shoppers via its ePacket program. The program is an agreement between U.S. Postal Service and China Post that provides Chinese vendors cheaper access to US shoppers on smaller items that weigh up to 4.4 pounds or 1.7 kilograms.
The agreement allows Chinese vendors selling on Amazon to shop via ePacket, which means the online retailer will get less money than “if it had handled packing and delivery.”
Amazon’s faster delivery offer is pitched to US shoppers to encourage Chinese manufacturers and suppliers to have their items delivered directly to the company’s warehouses. The online retailer is also offering incentives to make products Prime eligible. This offer lets Chinese vendors reach Amazon’s most loyal customers who pay $99 each year on delivery incentives.
By minimizing the shipping costs on smaller items and speeding up delivery, Amazon is hoping to win over merchants who sell the items and customers who need said items shipped quickly. Each year, US-based online shoppers order tens of millions of units of smaller items with light dimensions, according to company documents reviewed by Bloomberg News.
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Crooked Hillary arranged the E-packet for Bezos and Bezos is carrying her through this election with blatantly slanted coverage from his Washington Post. It’s an obvious quid pro quo. Trump isn’t stupid enough to keep e-packet after he gets in (because it’s a terrible deal for the US), so Bezos entire fortune rests on her re-election. Amazon is depending on e-packet to break/crush/obliterate the US based sellers from ebay and every other site. Bezos’s biased coverage of the election is simply a campaign donation that should be reported or a straight up bribe (same thing in reality). E-packet allows Chinese vendors to use our post office to ship items that weigh up to 4.4 lbs directly from China to US customers for 93 cents. Meanwhile, I’m an American citizen and I have to pay up to 20 dollars to ship a 4.4 pound item cross country. What a disgusting pillaging of the US taxpayer (who subsidize the post office) and US based sellers (who are gouged horribly so USPS can give shipping away to their competitors). Why should I pay $20 and the Chinese guy pays 93 cents to get the same service from USPS. Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet and their ilk are only able to get rich because they bribe our politicians. The globalist are pure evil x20. They strut around like great visionaries when the only thing they should be seeing is the back of a cell. Crooked Hillary sold my family out in favor of the slave trade. Now, thanks to E-packet, it’s just like every American household has their own little Chinese slave directly connected to their masters in the US. The libs are all for human rights and helping poor people in the US, until they need to throw one under the bus to get free shipping from China on a USB cord or a deal on a pepper farmed under slave conditions in Mexico. How quick Obama and crooked Hillary were to rig the export and import shipping rates to cut US based sellers off from all foreign markets and render us unable to compete on our home territory; just in time to call my mixed race family a bunch of deplorables. This coming from a women who takes donations to run a ’employ my pals in between Presidencies foundation’ from Saudi lunatics and every other anti-everything (ALL the things she called out) despot on Earth. This from a women who sold out 30 million US based sellers with her e-packet gift to Bezos. This from the women who started the Obama birth rumors, and who is married to a pedophile who said Obama ‘would have been carrying my bags a few years ago’. And to be called a deplorable person by an insane Neocon who is personally responsible (just like Hitler was) for the deeds and chaos unleashed – pursuant to her policy – in Syria, Libya, and throughout the Middle East, is really the cake. What’s deplorable is unleashing a purposeful tactic based on Alinsky’s strategy of targeting a group and dehumanizing them so they can be further abused without sympathy or remorse. Bezos and Hillary for jail 2016!