Amazon arrival excites Aussies based on Nielsen research

Nielsen Omnibus has released a research showing Aussie customers were excited to the arrival of Amazon in their country. Based on the research, 75 percent of Australians aged 18 and above said they were interested in Amazon Australia. Fifty-six percent of the responders declared that they would purchase from retailer's Australian site while 45 percent would pay to be an Amazon Prime member.

The Nielsen survey also showed the results for buying products in the retailer's online site. According to the result, 67 percent of Australian customers would buy electronic goods followed by books with 61 percent. The third in rank was clothing with 59 percent. A small percentage of respondents said that they would buy fresh vegetables and fresh meat through the Amazon site. There were only nine percent customers who would buy fresh vegetables while seven percent would buy fresh meat.

The Citigroup report also showed that the sales of Amazon's electronic products were higher than other products. "We expect the greatest impact to be felt by electronics retailers given Amazon's product range and the branded nature of these products. We estimate 44 percent of its product sales would be electronics [and] the next largest category is likely to be physical and electronic media including books," Craig Woolford, Citigroup's head of research.

When Nielsen gauged the customer's awareness about the Amazon and Amazon Prime, the result showed that males were more aware on Amazon than female. There was 62 percent male who were aware on the brand. For Amazon Prime, there were only 27 percent of the respondents who knew about it.

"Online retailing giant, Amazon, is set to shake things up in the Australian retail jungle when it launches in September 2017; with talks of it offering a completely new grocery shopping experience in the way it integrates physical stores with online ordering," Megan Treston, Nielsen Australia retailer services director, said in a statement. Amazon Prime was expected to roll out in 2017 while Amazon Fresh would be launched six to eight months later.

Woolworths, JB Hi-Fi, Wesfarmers and Myer were already preparing for the US retailer's arrival in Australia. The local giants were improving their in-store services and experiences and building omni-channel capabilities and customer databases. However, experts were worried that the number of retailers that would go into administration would increase. But James Stewart, Ferrier Hodgson retail partner, said that Amazon's arrival would take a year or two to have that knock-on effect in the local giants' sales.