KACHARAGADLA

For many retailers, the thought of going up against Amazon is daunting. One strategy is to embrace the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality — and build a brand as an Amazon seller. But using Amazon as a commerce platform is not as straightforward as one might think, according to James Thomson. Thomson is a Partner at  Buy Box Experts  and co-author of  The Amazon Marketplace Dilemma . He believes that a company looking to win on Amazon must understand 5 specific concepts if they want to succeed: Amazon is not your partner – start behaving accordingly. “Too many brands appear to believe that when Amazon Retail reaches out to buy product, somehow a partnership is being formed between your brand and Amazon. It is critical to realize that in fact, Amazon’s incentives rarely align with the incentives of your brand.” Amazon is committed to building a marketplace with the largest selection at the lowest prices. “While a brand may be attracted to the customer base of

Amazon is due to move to a new office on Bishopsgate in the City of London. Silicon Valley giants Google and Amazon could significantly pull back on their UK operations if the country leaves the European Union this week. Both companies have pledged to build new UK headquarters in the near future that would house thousands of "Googlers" and "Amazonians" but the expensive projects could be abandoned in favour of offices in cities like Paris and Berlin if there's a Brexit. Needless to say, such a decision would likely have a significant impact on the UK economy. Last month, Eileen Burbidge, partner at Passion Capital and chair of Tech City UK, said in a statement: "London is the biggest tech centre in Europe and attracts the brightest and best talent. Founders and investors fear that advantage would be lost if the UK leaves the EU. We don't really know what would happen and that uncertainty is dangerous. Would companies mov

Amazon Books is now open for business in Seattle. The floor is hardwood and the shelves and displays are weighed down by beautiful, physical books. It looks and smells like any ordinary bookstore. But make no mistake. It’s anything but. Amazon’s new store is the digital economy’s coming full circle -- flipping the model to tie together online and offline in a whole new way. It’s establishing land-based business on ecommerce prowess, and modeling the methodology of the next generation of retail. The rise of an online superstore Amazon is an operation born and raised online. It speaks fluent “onlinese,” and in fact has written large chunks of the dictionary. It is the biggest, fastest and most innovative force shaping the way the world has been conducting commerce in the past 20 years, and it’s seared into the collective mind as the main deliverer of ecommerce Gospel. Now a mature 20-year-old juggernaut, the Seattle store isAmazon’s first brick-and-mortar consumer presence. F

Amazon India has emerged as the top spender in the third quarter of 2015 Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Naaptol and a clutch of other e-commerce companies have been heavy advertisers across media, in regional as well as English language media, in the first nine months of 2015. A recent report by S-Group, TAM Media Research shows that IS-B2C (Internet Services and business to consumer) category has increased its ad spends by over 50 per cent in 2015 (three quarters), across all media. And Amazon India has emerged as the top spender in the third quarter of 2015. Between January 2015 and September 2015, ad volumes for online shopping companies have increased 62% for print, 78% for TV and 126% for radio over the same period in 2014   The number of online shopping advertisers has increased with the maximum numbers visible in print and radio; a rise of more than 32% is expected in the coming quarter (Q4 2015 over Q3 2015)   In Q3 2015 as compared to Q2 2014, Amazon

Global e-commerce giant Amazon continues to invest “very heavily” in the Indian market, encouraged by its strong sales numbers and expanding seller base, a top company executive has said. Amazon Senior Vice President and CFO Brian T. Olsavsky said the U.S. - based company has seen sales quadruple during the festive season (pre-Diwali sales) compared to last year. “We’re really encouraged with what we are seeing, both on the customer side and the seller side. On the customer side, active customer accounts are up 230 per cent year-over-year. “We are in the middle of the Diwali season that is going really well. Sales are 4x what they were last year,” he said on an investor call. Mr. Olsavsky added that the company has been adding 40,000 products a day so far this year on its platform and the number of sellers has grown more than 250 per cent year-on-year. “About 90 per cent of those sellers are using our logistics and warehouse services. And as a result, we’ve tripled our fu

Global e-commerce behemoth Amazon, is expecting India to be its largest overseas market, taking over Japan, Russia and the UK. The Indian market is also expected to be the quickest to reach $10 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the company’s history. Diego Piacentini, senior vice-president for international business at Amazon, said, I can’t project the year but in the next few years India will be the second-biggest market for us (after the US) — there is no doubt. It was the fastest billion-dollar GMV for us and I believe it will even end up to be the fastest to get to $10 billion. The biggest surprise is no doubt how fast our size in India has grown. I am an optimistic person but I never guessed that we will become this size in only just more than two years. I have never seen anything like this – not in the US, not in Europe, not in Japan and we are number one in the US, number one in Europe and number one in Japan… This is extraordinary. The company has been

The service is great for 're-picking' your favourite titles that you might have lost touch with One of the memories from my childhood is about the library period we had in junior school. Every week, during a stipulated period lasting 40 minutes, we would discuss books we had read, or were tasked to read, that month. For me, the highlight used to be at the end of the period, when books were lent out, according to roll number. Since our roll numbers were alphabetically arranged according to our surnames, in a class of 35 boys, I would usually be the 30th one to pick a book, mostly stuff no one wanted to read. While I was disappointed with the rather limited choice, it did introduce (and re-introduce) me to certain authors - Mark Twain's writings outside of Tom Sawyer, Isaac Asimov (whom my teachers had the foresight to introduce at that stage), Arthur C Clarke and PG Wodehouse. This also led me to experiment with various genres right through my growing up years, cou