Shein and Temu are popular in the United States, giving Amazon a headache

According to foreign media reports, affected by inflation, American consumers are increasingly favoring low-priced goods. With this favorable trend, shein and Temu are becoming more and more accepted by Americans.

Since its launch in the US market in September 2022, Temu's monthly visits (website + app) have been increasing, reaching 70.5 million in March this year. Shein's monthly visits have doubled to 41 million since its launch in the US in March this year.

Amazon's visits fell from 217.5 million in 2022 to 211 million in March 2023.

Data from statistical agencies such as Comscore, Similarweb and Sensor Tower all show similar results.

Previously, research by Insider Intelligence showed that if there are no changes, Amazon's e-commerce market share in the United States will stop at 38% in 2021 after years of growth, and will maintain this number for at least the entire year of 2022.

However, the emergence of shein and Temu has disrupted the stagnant US e-commerce market and allowed sellers such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay to discover new opportunities.

According to foreign media reports, since shein opened the three-party model, thousands of Amazon sellers have joined the platform, including many American sellers. The explosive growth of the platform has also attracted many well-known brands. For example, Forever 21 has signed a contract with shein to sell online in the United States through the platform.

In addition to sellers, many buyers are also attracted to Shein and Temu because the goods here are cheap, although they have to wait for several weeks to get the goods, which is completely different from Amazon's strategy centered on delivery speed. Amazon has always regarded traditional e-commerce companies such as Walmart and Target as competitors and has created a large number of warehouses across the United States so that it can deliver goods to customers more quickly.

Sources said Amazon currently does not know how to deal with low-price competition from Shein and Temu, which is very rare for the company.

Some company leaders believe that since shein and Temu are not pursuing delivery speed but price, which is what users value most at the moment, they can also sell products with long shipping times but low prices.

Former Amazon CEO Steve Tadelis (professor of economics at the University of California) said that Shein and Temu did not pursue a fast delivery strategy within two days, nor did they raise customer service standards like Amazon, but they sold cheap things, which made some customers not mind the delivery deadline.

However, Shein and Temu still have a long way to go to surpass Amazon in the e-commerce field. According to Similarweb data, 93% of users who visit Temu also use Amazon, and among Amazon users, 8% use Temu. Amazon's conversion rate is close to 12%, compared to Shein and Temu's conversion rate of only about 5%.

Amazon

SHEIN

Temu

US Market