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Expanding to an Amazon International Business

By Sarah Gough |

July 23, 2021

| Learning Resources

How to Expand to an Amazon International Business

When you develop your Amazon international business, you’re joining the ranks of Amazon Global Sellers who are taking advantage of the immense growth in online shopping.

The pandemic may have brought an incredible challenge. Still, it also resulted in an unprecedented surge of online shoppers – with most of them buying from Amazon. Since this affects shoppers from numerous countries, now would seem the best time to go global with your Amazon business.

However, if you’re going to use the Amazon Global Selling program to diversify your sales, you need to understand the intricacies of serving customers overseas beforehand.

Quick Takeaways

  • Amazon has 16 marketplaces that cover 180 countries, providing sellers extensive access to millions of customers worldwide.
  • Amazon marketplaces have four unified seller account groups: Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.
  • There’s only one monthly fee for every Amazon Unified seller account.
  • Using Amazon FBA frees you up from handling returns and providing customer service.

Pros and Cons of an Amazon International Business

Before entering the global market, you need to understand the opportunities and risks involved. This approach will help you discern if your business is ready to diversify.

Advantages

If you decide to make your products available in other regions, you’ll enjoy several benefits, including:

  • Increased customer base: When you sell in other Amazon marketplaces, you immediately get access to customers from other countries.
  • Boost in sales: Since you’re targeting more customers, you can increase your sales coming from other regions. They’re more likely to buy a product with faster delivery and lower fees than order from the U.S. and wait for weeks to receive it.
  • Immediate brand recognition: Your expansion to other countries will be under the Amazon brand. As a result, you won’t have to go through the hoops of building your brand from the ground up.
  • Simplified selling: Amazon will fulfill orders on your behalf, handle customer service, and take care of customer returns. You won’t even have to worry about local language restrictions, since the marketplace will handle it for you.

Disadvantages

Here are some of the challenges you need to be aware of when you enter the global market:

  • Localized customer reviews: Reviews on Amazon greatly influence most customers’ buying decisions. If you already have many positive reviews for your products on Amazon.com, they won’t show up on your product listing in Amazon.co.uk. It works both ways, though, preventing any negative reviews from showing up in other marketplaces.
  • Marketing challenges: While Amazon marketplaces use local languages for their customers, you’ll still have to market your products through social media and local websites. It can pose a considerable challenge because of the language barrier and variations in marketing approaches per region.
  • Exposure to more competitors: As you open your business to customers from different countries, you’re opening up to more competitors as well. Get ready to face competitors that offer similar products with local variations you didn’t encounter in the U.S. marketplace.

If you’re planning to handle order processing yourself instead of using FBA, you’ll have more challenges to go through. You’ll be dealing with customs, taking care of customer returns, and providing customer service, all wrapped up in a foreign language. The best solution would be to hire employees local to the country.

Amazon’s Global Marketplace Distribution

With Amazon Global Selling, you can list your products on Amazon and sell them to 16 marketplaces, serving customers in 180 different countries. Here’s how the platform groups the marketplaces:

Americas

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East

These websites also use languages specific to the country, making them accessible to the locals. Specific customer preferences and buying habits affect the product recommendations on each of these marketplaces.

How to Sell Internationally on Amazon

You can lessen the risks of selling internationally on Amazon and cash in on the opportunities by using these best practices.

1. Analyze the Market in Each Country

Before introducing your product to a specific country, you need to perform due diligence and learn if there’s a demand for it. Don’t get discouraged by the competition, since this is proof that people are already interested in buying your product.

If you believe that there’s significant local demand, analyze and weigh the cost to sell your product. And if you’re planning to sell to non-English speaking countries, you’ll have to change your packaging to cater to their language.

Make sure to line up the legal, financial, and business requirements before starting operations. Also, be aware that different countries have varying business rules and regulations.

2. Create a Unified Seller Account

After determining which marketplaces you want to start selling in, you need to create an Amazon seller account for the corresponding market. So, for example, if you’re going to expand to the United Kingdom, you’ll have to make a seller account on Amazon.co.uk.

Each marketplace has varying monthly fees as well. For instance, the U.K. requires a monthly cost of £25, while Australia requires AUS$49.95. 

Nevertheless, you’ll only have to pay once for every unified account. When you pay AUS$49.95 for an account in Amazon.com.au, you won’t have to pay additional fees for other countries that belong to the same group, such as Japan, China, and India.

3. Create your Product Listing

The process of listing products in other countries is the same as when you first did it in the United States. You’ll need the following to do so:

  • Product identification, such as a UPC or ISBN
  • Captivating product title
  • Excellent copy for your product description
  • High-quality product images
  • Amazon keywords so potential customers can easily see your products

You’ll also need to set your fulfillment method, whether FBA or not. When you select FBA, you’ll be storing the products in a local Amazon fulfillment center.

Achieve New Heights in your Amazon Business

Expanding your Amazon business to other countries offers a whole new set of challenges. However, the rewards of becoming successful in the international marketplace can considerably offset the risks. Do it slowly but surely, branching out to other countries after you’ve established your foothold on the current one.

Read our related articles about running an Amazon business and discover more effective ways to boost your brand.