Discover relevant topics related to Shopify and Amazon, the two largest e-commerce platforms in the world.

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The topic of selling on Amazon and the associated international expansion opportunities is becoming increasingly interesting for many sellers. But how important is Amazon today, and what global marketplaces are currently available?

Selling on Amazon – worldwide

Jeff Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 and turned what was then an online bookstore run out of his garage into one of the world's most successful online retailers. In 2018, more than 300 million different products were offered on the German Amazon Marketplace alone. Given this abundance, it is not surprising that the Amazon Marketplace has become the first port of call for more and more people when searching for products and information, and that approximately every second e-commerce order is processed via Amazon. In Germany, more than 44 million customers click on "Buy now" several times a year. According to statistics from IFH Cologne, there is a rising trend: while in 2004 a German Amazon customer ordered from Amazon around eight times, by 2017 they were clicking on "Buy now" an average of 41 times. Amazon's German trading platform generated a trading volume of more than €20 billion in the 2018 financial year. Around 45% of this trading revenue was generated by more than 300,000 third-party retailers on the German market. For this reason, there are now numerous Amazon agencies that support both small and large companies in their expansion.

Looking at Amazon's global sales, it is clear that it is not only the German market that offers enormous potential for retailers. Amazon generated around US$232.89 billion in 2018 on its 16 online marketplaces worldwide. While the marketplaces in China (amazon.cn) and India (amazon.in) are currently only accessible to sellers based within those countries, Amazon offers retailers the opportunity to sell worldwide on the 14 other marketplaces, regardless of where they are based. Selling globally on Amazon allows retailers to expand their sales activities and reach millions of new customers via international marketplaces. The following table provides an overview of Amazon marketplaces in Asia (6), Europe (5), Oceania (1), and North and South America (4), as well as when the platforms were launched.

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Selling on Amazon – worldwide

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