{"id":559315,"date":"2024-09-09T16:59:59","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T14:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=559315"},"modified":"2024-09-09T17:03:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T15:03:40","slug":"amazon-prime-plans-for-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/559315-amazon-prime-plans-for-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Amazon Prime plans for South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Amazon is busy ironing out the specifics for the launch of Prime in South Africa. That’s the word from Amazon Sub-Saharan Africa managing director Robert Koen, speaking to BusinessTech<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon launched its South African marketplace<\/a> in May 2024, offering shoppers free delivery on their first purchase and free delivery on orders over R500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At launch, it also supported 3,000 pickup points, partnering with Pargo and The Courier Guy to offer shipping to lockers nationwide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the lack of Prime and Amazon’s extensive portfolio of Kindle, Echo, and Fire devices on the platform dampened what was\u00a0otherwise a formidable launch<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the countries where Amazon has launched its Prime membership, it offers free shipping \u2014 including same-day shipping where available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Subscribers also get access to discounts and special discount shopping periods, such as Prime Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prime also bundles subscriptions to Amazon’s video streaming service, Prime Video, as well as Prime Music and Prime Reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon Prime Video is currently available in South Africa through a standalone R79 per month subscription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Launching a more limited local marketplace without much fanfare is not unusual for Amazon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, when Amazon launched its Australian marketplace in December 2017, it also\u00a0didn’t live up to the hype<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Amazon\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0its Prime subscription service in Australia six months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By December 2018, after a year in the country, the number of products on Amazon had grown from 7.5 million to almost 100 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of marketplace sellers reportedly also grew from 2,000 to 25,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, Marketplace Pulse’s research at the time showed that 40% of sellers were Australian locals. The other 60% were mostly from China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether South Africa’s online marketplaces will evolve in the same way remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One industry source with over 15 years of international shipping experience told MyBroadband that South Africa’s market is tiny<\/a>, and the administrative burden might be too high to attract many international sellers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“If you’re a marketplace seller and you want to leave stuff at an Amazon warehouse here for Fulfilment by Amazon, you have to get VAT registered,” they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This requires sellers to have decent cashflow because they will have to pay tax on stock before they’ve sold it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One option is for these sellers to use Amazon Easy Ship or Self Ship instead of Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA) to deliver orders and only send a product (and pay tax) when it’s been sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amazon Easy Ship lets sellers store and pack their own products, while Amazon handles delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Self Ship, sellers can handle their own warehousing, packing, and delivery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, poor experiences with non-FBA merchants in Australia resulted in them getting a reputation for bad customer service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the same happens in South Africa, shoppers may also avoid merchants that aren’t on the Fulfillment by Amazon programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takealot taking the fight to Amazon<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Following the launch of Amazon’s South African marketplace, Takealot immediately launched its own subscription service<\/a> called TakealotMore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TakealotMore is offered in two tiers \u2014 Standard and Premium \u2014 priced at R39 and R99, respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For orders over R500, the Standard subscription includes two free same-day deliveries and collections and unlimited free next-day deliveries and collections on Takealot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through Mr D, it also gives one free restaurant delivery with a minimum order value of R150 and free grocery delivery for an order of R350 or more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Premium subscription includes unlimited same-day deliveries and collections on Takealot for orders with a minimum value of R500.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All next-day and weekend deliveries and collections are free without any minimum order amounts, and subscribers get ten free standard deliveries for bulky items in a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regarding Mr D benefits, their first five orders of the month with a minimum value of R150 will qualify for free delivery, while free grocery deliveries with a minimum value of R350 are unlimited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TakealotMore does not offer access to streaming services \u2014\u00a0one of the major features of an Amazon Prime subscription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Takealot Group CEO Frederik Zietsman previously said Takealot does not currently plan<\/a> to launch a streaming service. However, they aren’t ruling it out as a possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zietsman said Takealot could execute a project of that scale and would work with a partner to achieve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that instead of creating a Prime clone, Takealot wants to investigate and deploy the services that its customers want the most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Maybe South African consumers want something else. Maybe accessible healthcare, maybe content. I’m just saying that streaming is one of the elements that is possible in the future,” said Zietsman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon says it is working on launching its Prime membership programme in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":535449,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[723,16692,82985,64438,43168,81789,90068,995,94493],"class_list":["post-559315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-prime","tag-frederik-zietsman","tag-mr-d","tag-mr-d-food","tag-mr-d-groceries","tag-robert-koen","tag-takealot","tag-takealotmore"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559315"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559497,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559315\/revisions\/559497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}