Why is Everyone Afraid of Amazon Entering Australia? It’s Not Like They’re Colonists or Anything!

Amazon Australia

After months of speculation about the timing of Amazon’s retail launch in Australia, Reuters reported today that Amazon is ready to shake up the Australian retail market.

“We are excited to bring thousands of new jobs to Australia, millions of dollars in additional investment, and to empower small Australian businesses through Amazon Marketplace,” the email said, referring to the company’s online retail shopfront service.”Reuters

Amazon’s international expansion plan has been an open secret as the company systematically targeted one big economy after the other, so it has been a bit of surprise for us that Amazon took such a long time to get in to Australia. The country ticks every box for e-commerce operations – more than 80% of the country’s population lives in cities, and more than 90% of the population is connected to the Internet.

“Of the 24 million people living in the country (as of 2015), nearly 15.1 million – or about 63% of the total population – is living in five cities; and the major portion of the country’s population is living in a narrow coastal strip stretching from Brisbane to Adelaide.”

You can read our analysis about the Australian market – and why we think Amazon is actually late in entering Australia – in our recent article, titled:

Why Amazon’s Success in Australia is Almost Guaranteed

Rumors about Amazon’s retail entry into the 12th largest economy started swirling after the company started recruiting its workforce in the country. Around March 22, when we looked up Amazon’s career section, we found 111 open positions in Sydney, 14 in Melbourne and 10 in Brisbane which, now, at the time of writing this article, reads 116, 11 and 9 in the three cities.

Though lot of those jobs were for Amazon Web Services, which the company launched in 2012, it was jobs like this one that made it obvious that the e-commerce behemoth is gearing up for its retail launch.

Now that Amazon has been flagged off in the great continent nation, we’re excited about its growth in that market.

We predicted that Australia would be easy pickings for Jeff Bezos and team because of various factors we outlined in the earlier article linked above. But if you look at the headlines of some of the articles being written about the company’s entry into Australia, you’d think there was a military invasion coming:

Experts Believe Amazon Will Destroy Australian Retail – Gizmodo

Amazon’s seismic hit is coming to Australian retailingBusiness Insider

Mike O’Donnell: Retailers prepare for foreign invasionStuff.co.nz (emphasis mine!)

“Foreign”? Really?? Now he’s got me thinking: Is Mike O’Donnell Maori on his father’s side, mother’s side or just the wrong side of the Pacific AND Atlantic Oceans? Maorish, perhaps?

Mike O’Donnell

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