Selling traffic is sometimes more profitable than selling goods.

01 Amazon promotes off-site products

Even with the largest seller team and more than 300 million products for sale, Amazon still feels inadequate.

Recently, Amazon launched a new feature called “Buy for Me” for U.S. customers, which helps users purchase products that are not available on Amazon.

Specifically, Buy for Me can provide complete purchasing services. When users search for brand products, they will see related products from other brand websites within the platform and outside the site. Users can choose to click on the link to jump to the brand website, or they can choose to purchase directly through the Buy for Me function.

After entering the Buy for Me page, users can browse the detailed information of the brand's products on the Amazon site and consider whether to confirm the order. If they decide to continue purchasing, the user can complete the checkout on Amazon and track the package logistics information on Amazon afterwards. However, after-sales services such as returns and exchanges need to contact the brand store.

Currently, the Buy for Me function has been launched in the Amazon Shopping application and is in the testing phase and is only available to some US customers. The number of off-site brands and products available for selection is also relatively limited. It is expected that after receiving feedback from the test, Amazon will push more off-site brand products to more customers.

As for the requirements for brand entry, Amazon did not disclose relevant specific information, but it stated that the platform will not charge commissions to customers because so far, this feature is only an experiment to help customers find more products.

02 Expand retail influence

Although it sounds like Amazon is "compromising" by buying other brands' products on behalf of customers, it is actually a win-win situation for Amazon. If Buy for Me actually responds well, Amazon's influence on users and brands will be greatly improved. This is one of the goals Amazon needs to achieve most at the moment.

As we all know, Amazon is firmly the leader in the global e-commerce field. However, in recent years, the strong rise of emerging e-commerce platforms led by Temu and TikTok Shop has led to the market share that Amazon can continue to explore being occupied first. Under such a situation, if Amazon wants to continue to expand and develop, it must seize all opportunities that can bring about incremental growth.

For example, at the end of last year, Amazon launched the low-price marketplace Amazon Haul to directly compete with Temu for market share in the lower-tier market. Although Amazon Haul has not achieved outstanding market results so far, and it coincides with changes in tariff policies at this time, Amazon shows no signs of backing down. Instead, it is full of confidence in Amazon Haul. 

At the end of February, people familiar with the matter revealed that Amazon plans to expand Amazon Haul to Europe later this year. Although Amazon did not explicitly agree with the news, its spokesperson said, "We have been exploring new ways to work with sales partners to delight customers around the world with more choices, lower prices, and greater convenience." Recently, Amazon also launched a desktop version of Amazon Haul, providing users with multiple channel choices.

It can be seen that Amazon is continuing to spread its influence to all levels of markets through various methods. For Amazon, this is not only an inevitable choice to cope with market competition, but also a key path to continued upward breakthroughs.