Amazon is a household name these days. The company has managed to take itself from a simple online book dealer all the way to being the e-commerce powerhouse it is, synonymous with online selling. There are a lot of great things to be said about the Amazon company, what with their ability to give sellers new platforms and means to sell as well as provide convenient buying options for shoppers. However, similar to any other company, Amazon is not perfect, and there are certainly ways that both buyer and seller could feel not so inclined to adhere to the company. Let’s consider some of the potentials cons of buying and selling with Amazon.
Amazon Shopper: Cons
Detracts from Testing Products
The ability to have products sent to you, no matter where you are at any given point, is certainly a great convenience. However, sometimes that convenience isn’t the most important thing about a purchasing experience. With items such as electronics, appliances, specialty products like musical instruments, and much more, there is a corresponding desire to take them on a trial use. When you are shopping online with Amazon, you can miss out on the opportunity to actually try out the items that you are buying. This ultimately forces the buyer’s hand to go to stores to showroom products in stores or buy the product in order to even try it, which could take away from the convenience of the whole process, in the end.
Detracts from Seller/Buyer Relations
Online items for purchase, showcased on Amazon, generally come with a fair deal of customer feedback, reviews, and insight into the usefulness of the products. However, relative to the help you receive from in-person, interpersonal communication with knowledgeable associates, online customer reviews may not give you all the aid necessary to gain the clearest and most educated idea of your needs and fulfilling them. Being in a brick-and-mortar is oftentimes a good way to sift out the uncertainty. Whether it be testing products or talking to experts about products and services, a lot of people prefer this mode of commerce. Even the younger generations that are prone to digital use, millennials, are showing a 70 percent preference toward brick-and-mortar (Forbes).
Shipping Matters
There is something really satisfying about going to a store, getting the things you need, and having them to use from that moment forward, without additional ties. One of the downsides of Amazon is the lack of that immediate satisfaction, since it operates exclusively from an online selling platform. While the company offers great shipping options, some that could even your order to you by two days following your purchase, it does not beat the ultimate convenience of having what you need right away and not having to wait. Forty-nine percent of consumers prefer shopping in brick-and-mortar stores due to the fact that they can bring it home immediately (Retail Dive). Even with the most convenience options, relative to operating online, it can not add up to the convenience of in-store shopping for many.
Amazon Seller: Cons
Amazon Getting All the Attention
As a seller, your hope is that you can win over the business of a large clientele base and attribute the success to your networking and new customer attainment efforts. However, when you sell through, you may not get all of the attention that your company deserves. Online shoppers may sometimes disregard the actual seller through which they are buying and instead associate the Amazon with the product. Having the abilities to sell through Amazon is an opportunity for people to use the brand as a means of showcasing their business effectively on the biggest online storefront, however, sometimes sellers will get fall victim to having Amazon receiving primary recognition. If Amazon is getting all credit or acknowledgement for a sale your company made through it, it can become detrimental to your brand recognition.
Limited Customer Communication
As previously stated, you work hard to put yourself and your brand out there as the go-to for anybody with needs that you can fulfill. With Amazon, not only could you possibly not get recognition you crave for the products you sell, but in certain cases, you might not even receive the customer information necessary to keep in touch with them moving forward. With certain Amazon selling feature options, such as Amazon Pay, you as the seller do not actually receive any of the buyer’s information, namely their email. So, in the end you are left either contactless with the people buying from you or you have to come up with alternate means to receive said information, which may not always be so easy outside of the selling context. You worked hard to build your business up, and to have to work additionally to even find a way to keep in contact with a customer, let alone actually keep in contact with them, would prove more daunting and time-consuming.
Limited Branding Potential
If you are shopping purely off of Amazon, instead of, say, looking for items using a search engine like Google, your branding opportunities could be greatly diminished. A lot of your efforts relating to your business are done in an effort to bring attention to your business on search engines. However, this SEO does not necessarily correspond to the Amazon selling platform and its additional features. So while your business may be present online and on Amazon, if somebody conducts the majority of their online shopping on Amazon, they might not necessarily find you with the ease that they would on bigger search engines, where you directed all of your visibility efforts. Branding and advertising your brand is key and you don’t want anything to hinder progress in that arena.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Amazon is a major name in the online selling world. They now account for the majority of online sales and continuing to reach out into more and more industries. As they grow, buyers and sellers alike are looking into doing business with this company, and while there are many pros to doing so, there are still issues and room for concern. To learn more about the Amazon company, there methods, and the expectations of doing business with them, contact Rave Retailer today!