“Companies are finally getting really good at selling directly to consumers, forcing them to question Amazon’s value to them,” writes a columnist at the Motley Fool:
Rather than one single powerhouse, the threat to Amazon comes in the form of hundreds of smaller e-commerce venues that can each take a tiny, collective stab at online shopping’s 800-pound gorilla. Within the past year, according to brand PR firm Diffusion, 2 out of every 5 Americans made a purchase directly from the brand or manufacturer, bypassing middlemen like Walmart or Amazon in the process…
The frequency of direct-to-consumer (DTC) purchases expected in the foreseeable future also fell from the year-ago version of the survey. Still, this mode of discretionary spending is on the rise in conjunction with the raw number of DTC options. Yes, any discussion about the threat the DTC option poses to Amazon must point out how athletic apparel brand Nike has already severed a fairly short-lived relationship with the world’s largest e-commerce platform so it can focus on its own retail sales effort. The decision will (if it hasn’t already) embolden other brands to make a similar decision to handle their own e-commerce affairs. It’s not just other major brands that might soon mull making their own way that could prove disruptive, though. It’s the hundreds of DTC brands never affiliated with Amazon in the first place that are still finding their way…
It’s not an existential threat to Amazon, to be clear. Diffusion’s survey indicates that direct-to-consumer shopping will grow 20% over the course of the next five years…not exactly a show stopper given that less than 10% of the nation’s retail industry is now driven by DTC shopping… The tepid growth estimate for DTC, however, may be rooted in a history that ignores how much direct-to-consumer brands have figured out in just the past few months and perhaps during 2019’s busy shopping season in particular. As it turns out, they’ve finally learned consumers really are responsive to brands they trust and connect with. As Loren Padelford, general manager of Shopify Plus, put it: “Consumers are coming back to [retailers] and saying, ‘We want to shop directly from the makers….'”
The exact scope or speed of the threat to Amazon still isn’t clear, and to the extent it can be measured, it’s also still in flux. One thing is certain, though: Neither consumers nor brands need Amazon as much as they used to. They’ve only just begun to figure it out. The crux of this paradigm shift is ahead.
of this story at Slashdot.
Source:: Slashdot