This September, the 22nd Amazon marketplace worldwide was published with the launch in Belgium. Which marketplaces exist so far, how relevant they are in national and international comparison, as well as further expansion opportunities are presented in this blog post.

What marketplaces are currently available?

Amazon launched its first marketplace in the USA in 1995. With trading centers in Germany and the United Kingdom, expansion to Europe followed just three years later. After three more countries - France, Canada and China - were added in the 2000s, a rapid increase in international marketplaces followed from 2010. In the last three years in particular, internationalization has taken on completely new features. Since 2020, eight countries in different regions of the world have been equipped with a country-specific marketplace.

The following table shows the different marketplaces with their respective start dates:

Relevance of the individual marketplaces

Sales

There are no reliable detailed figures on the exact sales volume of the individual marketplaces. Amazon itself has published in its Annual Report of 2021 disclosed the total net sales (incl. AWS, etc.) in the U.S., Germany, UK and Japan and bundled for the rest of the world for the years 2019-2021.

The figures show that the USA, with a market share of 66.8% in 2021, is by far the most relevant revenue driver. Although this share has declined slightly since 2019 (69%), it is still well ahead of the following marketplace, Germany (7.9%). Due in part to the Covid 19 pandemic, which was a boost to e-commerce in general, Amazon saw significant revenue growth in 2020 and 2021 across all marketplaces listed. The addition of eight new marketplaces since 2020 is also noticeable in the sales figures for the rest of the world. While these were $31.1 billion in 2019, they have more than doubled since then to $63.5 billion.

Search volume worldwide

Since no sales figures are published except for the USA, Germany, Japan, and the UK, we measure the relevance of all active Amazon marketplaces by the number of hits on the respective pages. The data relates to October 2022 and is fed into the analytics tool similarweb from the search results. In addition to the pure search volume, the respective rank of Amazon in national comparison to other eCommerce and shopping websites is also listed.

This confirms the basic statements from the revenue figures. As there, the USA, Japan, Germany and the UK are the TOP 4 in terms of search volume. However, Japan has more search volume with lower sales than the UK and Germany. 

Amazon's dominance is supported by the fact that it is the most visited e-commerce and shopping site in twelve of 21 countries (no data is available for Belgium). With the exception of China, Amazon is at least among the top 3 marketplaces in the e-commerce sector in every country.

Search volume in Europe

Since market entry on other continents is associated with more organizational and bureaucratic hurdles for European retailers, the first step towards expansion is usually the start in other European countries. Therefore, the figures for search volume in a European comparison are particularly interesting. If Turkey is counted as part of Europe, there are now ten different European marketplaces. 

Purely in terms of search volume, the European market is divided into 3 main categories.

Category 1: Germany, UK

Category 2: Italy, France, Spain

Category 3: Turkey, Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Belgium

Next Steps

As described earlier, significantly more marketplaces have been developed in recent years than in past periods. According to a report by the Businessinsider four more market entries are planned for the first half of 2023. South Africa, Colombia, Nigeria and Chile are to be at the top of Amazon's list of priorities. The exact schedule is as follows:

• South Africa - February 
• Colombia - February 
• Nigeria - April
• Chile - April

These four countries are particularly interesting because they open up completely new regions. With Nigeria and South Africa, the southern and central parts of Africa are connected in addition to the North African region (Egypt). Colombia and Chile are the first marketplaces in South America after Brazil. 

In recent years, it has become apparent that Amazon is providing more and more countries and other areas of the world with their own marketplace. This development does not seem to have come to an end yet. On the contrary, further marketplaces are to follow in the coming year. In terms of current search and sales volume, the USA is clearly the most important marketplace in the Amazon universe, followed by Germany, Japan and the UK. In Europe, in addition to Germany and the UK, Italy, France and Spain stand out from the rest. 

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