Ahead of the Unlocking profitability and sustainable growth panel at the first Amazon Sellers Summit – held on 14 May 2025 – Sahiba Sachdeva, current head of Amazon Europe ecommerce at Reckitt, explains why brand identity is the single most important and powerful asset when selling on marketplaces.
Taking a long-term view, what impact do you think Amazon’s increasing ecommerce dominance will have on direct-to-consumer (DTC) industry strategies?
In the long term DTC is going to evolve differently for different categories. For high involvement categories and certain categories where Amazon is still not a dominant player – like clothing and accessories – DTC will continue to thrive. But all the other categories it’s can’t sustain. The cost of customer acquisition, the friction to purchase and overhead and shipping costs are too high to make it a viable channel. Then the decision needs to be what are we looking to get from DTC store?
If it’s revenue channel – then its going to be unsustainable. But if it’s seen as an expense for all the extensive 1P data, as a marketing and content playground to see consumer interaction and to create a world for your loyal consumers to continue to interact and create communities, to create subscription business– then It still has an important role to play.
Because for now and in long term I don’t see Amazon solving for that immersive experience that your DTC website that speaks in brands language can create or a loyal customer base needs/craves for. But then DTC website becomes a marketing asset which also sells your product, than a business channel.
In your opinion, how do approaches to brand identity differ in Amazon’s evolving marketplace, and what do you see as the implications for product differentiation and competitive advantage?
Brand identity is the single most important and powerful asset that the company has to protect its future business and give competitive advantage. Brand identity is in many cases is assumed to be having a brand name on a product. But it’s more than that. It needs to have a relevance and stand for certain quality of product that consumer can expect.
And it needs to be build on Amazon ecosystem, but also outside. Especially outside Amazon ecosystem. Without it being built outside Amazon ecosystem the brand identity is not really giving you the competitive edge and not distinct to differentiate you from the competition. And also not to forget organic brand search and traffic from out of Amazon to an Amazon page supports your brand organic ranking on Amazon so much more – because Amazon sees consumers using Amazon as just a retailer in this case and not a discovery platform, and hence will automatically drive your product higher in rankings. And as Amazon evolves, we will see more and more benefit of having distinctive and a strong brand identity.
What one piece of advice would you offer brands looking to Amazon’s fulfilment infrastructure to streamline supply chain and improve customer experience?
Be sure you have someone who understands Amazon FBA processes in your team, which can make your stock ready for amazon fulfillment processes. Not have this capability has lots of downsides sometimes – stock not being available to sell because its lost/not in warded on time to high unexpected costs.
What impact do you think the increasing use of AI and automation on Amazon will have on product discovery and marketing strategies?
AI and automation will have a very high impact on Product discovery. We are seeing more consumers going through discovery to purchase cycle within AI tools, from Chat GPT to Rufus on Amazon. The changes are huge and now the need is to have your products being found on these AI chat tools.
So few things that will happen, firstly, the product recommendations from retailer AI e.g Rufus will now be more and more focused on the top 3 in the category, making it difficult to break into that top 3. Secondly any AI chat tool is using content to bring up suggested products based on consumer queries, that means you need even more rich content library on your brand page and also on your websites. But also not to forget the content on retailer websites like Amazon with their B and A+ content , UGC on various platforms and websites , reviews and ratings across websites that will further support your product discovery.
Now brands needs to have content on web that solves common consumer queries on brand , product and category. Thirdly marketing placements on AI tools have already started, (on Amazon Rufus will come soon), and that then becomes a strategic placement to win.
How do you see Amazon’s integration of brick-and-mortar locations (Amazon Go, Whole Foods, etc.) impact the future of omnichannel retail?
Amazon has very clearly realised the next barrier to growth that they need to break is grocery. And for that given the lower margins and low ASP, it needs to pivot to find more economic solutions to last mile delivery. And in this space we can assume that they are looking at maximising with Click and collect.
We will see more and more of these physical stores being not just an entry for Amazon for Physical store and exploration. But also it serves the need it has on alternative delivery options. This will give Amazon a good push to win against E-grocery retailers like Walmart. So omnichannel retail will have Amazon as a key player, maximizing the benefits that omnichannel retail gives. This means expect more breakthroughs, because if one thing we can be sure of with Amazon is , it will keep on innovating in this space till they don’t find a model that works. their deep pockets and consumer centricity will bring out some new breakthroughs in this space.
As part of RetailX Event’s Spring Festival 2025, the Amazon Sellers Summit is the definitive event for learning to build a strong brand presence on Amazon, drive Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) and optimise profits from the platform.
The Spring Festival will also see the return on ConsumerX, DigitalX, SubscriptionX and SustainabilityX with the introduction of Social Media Masters.
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