What is the difference between Amazon and Taobao? Five major differences

There are two giants in domestic e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce, namely Taobao and Amazon. Many merchants who want to engage in the e-commerce industry will take these two into consideration. So what is the difference between Amazon and Taobao? The answer is given below.

What is the difference between Amazon and Taobao?

(1) Different operational ideas

On the Taobao platform, your good products may not necessarily sell well, because you may have to pay huge promotion costs. Only with the support of huge promotion costs, this excellent product may have a chance of success. Although the Amazon platform also focuses on product promotion, it pays more attention to the quality and demand of the product itself. If your product happens to meet market demand and has good quality, then the promotion cost you have to pay is much less than the promotion cost on the Taobao platform.

(2) Different operating entities

Taobao platform is operated mainly through stores. Taobao sellers also set up many store benefits to attract and retain customers when conducting marketing. When Taobao customers successfully complete a transaction in a store, if the customer needs to buy the same product again, the customer will have a high probability of buying the product of this store, so Taobao sellers can easily retain some old customers.

On the Amazon platform, products are the main operating entity. Although there are stores on the Amazon platform, the influence of these stores is negligible compared to the Taobao platform. When shopping, most European and American customers will search directly in the search box on the homepage. Even if they buy the same product again, only a very small number of people will choose the store they bought before. Therefore, for Amazon sellers, the concept of a store is very vague. Amazon sellers do not need to carefully maintain their stores like Taobao sellers. They only need to manage their products well.

(3) Different customer openness

Taobao sellers can obtain detailed information and contact information of customers from Taobao stores, and then use SMS and other methods to promote again in marketing, so as to form a long-term cooperative relationship with customers. However, on the Amazon platform, customer information is absolutely confidential. The Amazon platform does not allow Amazon sellers to contact customers privately. If Amazon sellers do have important matters to communicate with customers, Amazon sellers can only contact customers through the internal messages of the Amazon platform, and personal contact information including email addresses cannot be left in the internal messages.

If the Amazon seller’s personal contact information appears in the internal message, this information will be identified and blocked by the Amazon system, and the Amazon seller’s store is likely to be closed due to violations. Amazon hopes to retain customers in this way, and Amazon sellers will not get any valuable customer information on the Amazon platform.

(4) Different comment rules

In the operation of Taobao stores, even if customers do not take the initiative to leave comments in the end, the system will default to giving positive reviews according to the rules of the Taobao platform.

Amazon does not have a "default positive review" feature. Product reviews will only appear if customers actively leave reviews. In addition, it is strictly prohibited to induce or force customers to leave positive reviews by offering material rewards. Once Amazon sellers do this, the only outcome will be that their store will be closed.

Amazon also has a direct review feature: buyers who have not purchased a product can leave a review for the product as long as they meet the buyer review qualification. This is not allowed on Taobao, where only buyers who have purchased the product are eligible to leave a review.

(5) Different operating models

Taobao itself is a trading platform, and it does not participate in product sales activities. Amazon is different from Taobao. Amazon not only provides a trading platform for sellers, but also participates in product development and sales. There are many products on the Amazon platform that are operated by Amazon. These product listings are marked with the words "by Amazon", and these products will be given more attention by the Amazon platform in terms of exposure and traffic.

It can be said that the relationship between the Amazon platform and sellers is both a cooperative and competitive relationship, while the relationship between the Taobao platform and Taobao sellers is only a cooperative relationship.

In summary, the difference between Amazon and Taobao is the difference between B2C and C2C. If you want to do cross-border e-commerce platform, you can consider Amazon. If you want to do domestic e-commerce, Taobao is a very good platform.

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