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~ Pattern ~

AMAZON

CHALLENGES

Text: Joanna Perry, Global Head of Marketing, Pattern // Photos: Unsplash

Amazon allows brands to easily sell cross-border, but there are also challenges. Pattern’s
latest research reveals some of the pain points brands have experienced in 2021 when selling
on the marketplace in Europe.

s an Amazon seller who is very active in Europe, from other Amazon sites to find products that aren’t
we’re always interested in feedback from brands available locally to them or because prices are much lower.
A on their experience of the platform. In the For example, some Amazon customers in the Netherlands
summer of 2021, we worked with our partner Profitero were still shopping from the German instance of Amazon
to survey brands whose products are sold on Amazon after Amazon.nl launched due to pricing disparity.
in Europe and the Middle East to examine the selling
models they use and the challenges they face. In addition, a wide range of products on the US Amazon.
com site is available for global delivery. So cross-border
The results show that while brands see the benefit of shopping is an issue in markets outside Europe too. The
expanding their customer bases using marketplaces such as UAE, Saudi Arabia and Australia also still see strong
Amazon—44.6% say international expansion using Amazon traffic to Amazon.com, even though they have local
is on their agenda—cross-border selling also creates some instances of the marketplace, as customers are prepared
challenges. to wait the longer lead times for international delivery in
order to buy products at lower prices.
The majority of the brands we surveyed, spanning product
categories such as consumer electronics, fashion, beauty, food When there are large differences between the price of
& drink, home & kitchen and healthcare products, sell their the same product across different markets, then it creates
products wholesale to Amazon in the UK and mainland an incentive for cross-border buying and selling. For this
Europe. reason, we encourage brands to think at least regionally,
if not globally, about their Amazon strategy, particularly
In the previous 18 months, Amazon has strengthened in relation to pricing. When we asked consumer brands at
its position in many European markets, particularly with what level Amazon pricing decisions are made within their
lockdown and store closures, meaning consumers had no business, 43.6% said at a country level, 45.5% at a regional
choice but to go online to find the products they required. level and just 10.9% at a global level.
Amazon became a primary route to market for consumer
brands in several categories during the lockdown, and in Pricing erosion
general, it is seen as a positive, complementary channel to Too many competing third-party sellers was mentioned by
their other online and offline channels. 90.9% of participants. Pattern itself is a third-party seller,
but we work closely with the brands we sell so that we can
However, when we asked them to identify the pain points ensure that their presence on the platform is optimised,
they’d faced with Amazon in the past year, a few that were and we’re looking to achieve profitability for the longer
noted related to cross-border e-commerce. term. Not all sellers think in this way, and many won’t have
a direct relationship with the brand or a desire to invest in
Pricing disparity building demand for the brand and simply use the tactic of
Customers shopping cross-border from other branches of undercutting to win short-term sales.
Amazon was an issue mentioned by 70.4% of participants
in the survey. Customers in Europe can choose to shop

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