 "Abhishek Jain")
Abhishek Jain, Head of Local Shops, Amazon early access for Prime members.
Ahead of the festive season of 2024, Amazon has introduced a suite of new features to enhance the onboarding experience and enable sellers to operate across multiple locations via the Local Shops program. With the new ‘1-Click Local Shops Onboarding’ feature, new sellers can enrol in the program through the Seller mobile app with a single click, enabling quick delivery within their city. This feature is also available to sellers who may have opted out of the program in the past and wish to return to selling their products locally.
Launched in April 2020, ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ has enabled offline retailers and neighbourhood stores to benefit from e-commerce. It helps them supplement existing footfalls at their stores by establishing a digital presence on Amazon.in and expanding their reach beyond their normal catchment area.
“The ‘Local Shops on Amazon’ serves as a bridge between traditional brick-and-mortar stores and Amazon’s vast online marketplace,” said Abhishek Jain, head of Local Shops at Amazon India. “Through this program, retail and local stores can list and sell their products online, offering a wider customer reach than before,” added Jain.
Local Shops was introduced by Amazon in India during the early stages of the pandemic to help small neighbourhood stores transition to an online presence and maintain business operations amid unprecedented disruptions. Today, over 3.5 lakh offline retailers and neighbourhood shops are part of this program, offering products across categories like fresh flowers, home and kitchen products, furniture, books and toys, healthcare, and apparel.
Over the past four years, the Local Shops program has expanded to 344 cities across India, including major metros as well as Tier-II and Tier-III cities. These include places such as Sangli, Osmanabad, Jamnagar, Gorakhpur, Jabalpur, Ratlam, Bikaner, Guwahati, Howrah, Tumkur, Jalpaiguri, Ernakulam, Kanchipuram, Patna, Rajkot, Agra, and Dehradun.
Amazon India is also simplifying operations for retailers with multiple offline stores. Such sellers can now operate a single account on Amazon and ship products from multiple offline locations. Sellers can also list unique regional selections and decide how and where they will ship these orders.
For customers, Amazon has enhanced the store-led shopping experience through Seller Storefronts, a feature available to all sellers on Amazon. These storefronts automatically curate the seller’s product offerings into sections like recommended buys, new arrivals, and best sellers. They also display the seller’s location (locality and city) and allow both customers and sellers to share the storefront across platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram using the social sharing button, driving more traffic. Customers can also access the Seller Storefront offline via a QR code installed in physical stores, which directly links to the seller’s online store. Offering an online channel ensures that customers can continue purchasing from the seller at their convenience.
“The success of our Local Shops program is proof of how kiranas can thrive with digital commerce while continuing their traditional mode of offline retail,” said Jain. “The rollout of 1-click onboarding, multi-location fulfilment, and storefront capabilities for sellers underscores our long-term commitment to them,” he added.
Interestingly, Amazon has also added unconventional product categories to Local Shops on Amazon to cater to customers who prefer to buy such products from a seller in their neighbourhood or city due to factors such as speed and store familiarity. These categories include home inverter batteries, automotive batteries, cooktops, lighting, solar panels, cycles, mirrors, sanitaryware, and tiles and paints.
The company expects its flagship sale event, Amazon Great Indian Festival (AGIF), this year to be the biggest ever. AGIF 2024 will start on September 27, with 24 hours of
First Published: Sep 26 2024 | 2:57 PM IST
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