The One Thing Business Owners Can Do to Beat the “Amazon Effect”
Amazon is constantly expanding, ever evolving, and quickly becoming the most important driver of online retail in the world.
It’s a phenomenon never before seen on the internet, or in retail for that matter. It even has its own name: The Amazon Effect, which is just a fancy way of collecting all the major effects Amazon has had in the physical and online retail space, and putting a scary sounding title on it.
The major change Amazon has introduced to retail is frictionless transactions. Buying clothes, shoes, and even your groceries online is as easy as entering some banking information and waiting for it to show up on your doorstep. Barring anyone stealing your packages from your porch, buying anything on Amazon is just easier than going into a store.
This is the major hurdle brick-and-mortar retailers must overcome. But even for e-tailers and online businesses, Amazon’s popularity and seeming monopoly on all things “online shopping” has made an impact.
It’s Jeff Bezos’ world, how do we live in it?
If you’re willing to give it a shot, beating Amazon can cost next to nothing.
Personalize
Don’t let every bad movie ever fool you: a great personality actually does go a long way.
For a retailer, that means more than smiling or looking even a little bit approachable. There’s a lot that goes into it. Today’s consumer markets are flooded with youth and millennials that are fully aware of market trends and, ultimately, buy based on their value systems.
This is the result of what online retailers like Amazon ultimately offer: options. There are hundreds of companies around the world that sell exactly what you do the same way you’re doing it. Your only way to stand out in the crowd is to flex your personality.
It used to be that a few good ads and a great looking product would get you by as an online or brick-and-mortar retailer. Now, customers want to know if what they’re buying is ethically sourced or environmentally friendly, if you believe in the death penalty, anything that can help them tie down the retailer or product they choose to buy.
But how can you do it? As much as the internet has fostered this change in buying habits, it’s also created a system for retailers to succeed.
Enter: social media.
You can probably name 20 different fast food chains that sell burgers and fries. Clearly the marketing team at Wendy’s saw this as an issue, and took to social media to spice up their brand a little.
Wendy’s gained $64 million in revenue in one year due to social media.
They’re not the only ones, but they’ve done it the best. While you might not want to go as far as they do (literally calling out other fast food chains for their bad product), social media outlets are a great way for customers to get an inside peek. Use it to connect, network, and joke around a bit. A little personality shared in this way can definitely boost your sales, and is something that Amazon isn’t great at.
Plus, it costs you nothing.
But humor isn’t the only way to a potential customers’ heart. Slapping an “environmentally friendly” or “ethically sourced” sticker onto your product or website is a great way to bring in customers that might not otherwise think of you. Granted, if you’re not operating this way already, it can be hard, and really expensive, to make the switch. But, if you’ve already “gone green” and aren’t flaunting it, now’s the time.
The last thing I’ll say here is to start building a community. Networking isn’t only a great business opportunity, but it opens you up to customer bases and markets you might otherwise have never touched.
The web is a great way to start your own community, or join one as well. Websites like Reddit are teaming with threads and groups that are always trying to boost numbers (another free way to market yourself, look at that).
Amazon can’t create or join a community because nobody is like them. Jeff Bezos has cornered and monopolized the online retail market, and nobody wants to play with him anymore.
Small business retailers on and offline have the advantage of: 1) Being approachable and 2) Sharing a common ground in a fight against Amazon’s effect on their market.
All of these things go into creating a personality for your brand. AmazonBasic products continue to attract market share in everything from yoga balls to batteries. It’s generic, and it makes ease and convenience a priority.
As the internet ages and people become more comfortable with online and offline shopping habits, consumers are going to care less and less about how fast they can get a copy of The Chamber of Secrets. They’re going to care how it got there, who the distributor was, and why it isn’t on Netflix already.
Small businesses don’t have to be like Amazon to “win” at retail. They have to be themselves, and not be afraid to let their personalities show.
Okay, maybe not that much.
