Amazon's Global Strategy: A Case Study of Market Entry in Australia

This case study examines Amazon's global market entry strategy, particularly its expansion into Australia. Amazon's approach, dubbed "Glocal" (Go Global, Think Local), involves adapting its business model to suit local market conditions. In Australia, Amazon initially faced challenges with high shipping costs but addressed this by establishing a distribution warehouse near Melbourne to facilitate same-day delivery. The company's global strategy includes acquisitions, fulfillment centers, and joint ventures, as seen in its earlier expansions into the UK, Germany, France, and Japan. Amazon's entry into emerging markets like India involved acquiring local e-commerce platforms. The case study highlights the importance of market research and strategic adaptation in Amazon's global expansion efforts, noting that while initial results in Australia may seem modest, Amazon remains confident in its long-term success due to its robust business model and market understanding.

Running Head: Amazon goes Global
Amazon.com
Amazon goes Global
Market Entry Strategy

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Amazon Market Entry Strategy-Australia Perspective
Australia with a population of 24 Million is a big developing market for Amazon’s growth
strategy, the company decided to foray into the Australian market in the year 2017 with a
view to strengthen its global footprint. However, the performance in the Australian market
has been lukewarm due to least number of sellers in the market and more so because
online retail is not as big a hit in Australia as in the US (Carson, 2017).
Amazon has opened a vast new distribution warehouse just outside of Melbourne to serve
the customers, who were initially paying huge shipping costs. The newly constructed
warehouse now aides the buyers with the option of same day delivery. The strategy of
Amazon in any of its global markets is the same “Go global and think Local”, which is also
called as Glocal. It will really be immature to predict the rate of penetration of Amazon in
the Australian market by the initial numbers, as a new market always takes time to stand on
its feet. However, Amazon is extremely sure of its business model and marketing research
that it will soon taste the fruits of success. In the earlier days, people had to pay huge sum
of money towards the packaging and shipping costs to get the goods from Amazon, the
company has successful eliminated this by opening up a huge warehouse centre. In the
future lies, many more such warehouse, fulfilment centres and even joint collaboration with
existing e-commerce players to leverage the already acquired customer’s information
(O’Connor, 2017)
Amazon Global Strategy
UK was the first international market for Amazon way back in the year 1998, ever since the
company has moved into more than 12 countries and improving the online shopping
experience of the customers. Amazon used acquisition marketing strategy in the UK,
Germany and France; the company acquired the largest online bookstores and eventually
started selling other product and services in that market. Japan was a different market for
Amazon, thus the company opened a fulfilment centre to cater the needs of the huge
market (Lorenzo, 2017). In the emerging markets like India, the company used the similar
model; it started selling its books and DVD through Junglee.com and later acquired it. Thus,

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it can be easily said that company uses its marketing expertise and research to enter into a
foreign market; the strategies are a combination of Warehouses, fulfilment centres,
acquisition and joint venture (Kotabe & Murray, 2018).

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References
Carson, G. (2017). Retail-Never forget the cycle. Equity, 31(4), 10.
Kotabe, M., & Murray, J. Y. (2018). Global Sourcing Strategy: An Evolution in Global
Production and Sourcing Rationalization. In Advances in Global Marketing (pp. 365-
384). Springer, Cham.
Lorenzo, L. (2017). Targeting International Customers in Japanese E-commerce: A Web
Content Analysis of the Marketing Mix in Rakuten and Amazon. co. jp.
O'Connor, T. (2017). Retail response. MHD Supply Chain Solutions, 47(4), 38.