Which is better, Amazon or Shopee? Detailed analysis

The mainstream cross-border e-commerce platforms are Amazon, Shopee and AliExpress. Therefore, most domestic merchants choose these three platforms when choosing a platform. So which one is better, Amazon or Shopee?

If I had to choose, I would choose Amazon first.

Shopee, which is based on the Southeast Asian platform, and Amazon, which is rooted in consumer groups in Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries, have fundamentally different customer groups and consumer spending power.

The economic base determines the superstructure. The consumption capacity of the Southeast Asian population directly determines that the Shopee platform can only adopt a marketing model of small profits but quick turnover.

Many people may say that we should look at customers' spending power from a development perspective. However, customers' spending power or purchasing power needs a long period of time to settle, and it may take 5 or 10 years to improve to a certain extent.

Let's analyze the composition of Shopee's customer base in detail. Among them, Singapore and Taiwan have strong spending power. However, the population base of these two countries is not large. Most of Shopee's customer base is composed of developing countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam, where the average monthly income is only about 1/3 to 1/4 of that in China. If we analyze these data carefully, we can find that Shopee's market potential is huge, but it will take a long time to convert it into actual sales and profits.

We know that sales are composed of the number of customers and the average customer spending. In addition to having a certain customer base, customers must also have a certain purchasing power, that is, the average customer spending must be high.

Although Amazon is currently a relatively mature market, market opportunities are relatively few. However, Amazon's biggest advantage is that it has the vast majority of high-income groups in Europe, America, Japan and other countries. Currently, Amazon has 200 million Prime members in the United States alone.

To put it bluntly, this is equivalent to Amazon kidnapping most of the high-income people to its platform, which forces us sellers to sell goods on its platform in order to reach these high-income people.

Ultimately, the essence of e-commerce is not to choose a certain platform, but to choose the customer group behind the platform.

In general, Amazon and Shopee have their own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. If you are a novice, it is recommended to choose Shopee. For merchants with e-commerce experience and sufficient funds, Amazon can be used.