One of Amazon’s defining features and services, apart from its wide selection of products, would be its Prime subscription. For those who subscribe to it, they are given free delivery options, and also faster delivery options, as well as access to a host of other services like Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Photos, and more.
Now it looks like the service has finally made its way to China, sort of. Amazon has recently announced that they will be expanding its Prime service to China, but it won’t be a complete replica of the service offered in the US. For starters one of the differences is that it will cost less at around $57.23 a year versus the $99 a year customers pay in the US.
Secondly it seems to only offer free shipping for orders over 200 yuan, meaning that access to other Prime services are not included. Basically the goal here is to encourage customers in China to shop on Amazon, where the retailer only has a 1.1% of the market share in the country in 2015, according to iResearch.
It is also meant to make Amazon more compelling and competitive against other local services such as Alibaba and JD.com. In a statement emailed to Reuters, Greg Greeley, Amazon Prime’s vice president said, “The launch of Prime in China represents a new convenient way for Chinese customers to access authentic and quality products from all over the world.” At the moment it is unclear if other Prime services will eventually find their way to the country, but for now we reckon it’s not a bad start.
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