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Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos confirmed on Monday that his company has spent $545 million to acquire Quidsi, the largest online diaper and other baby products retailer in the United States.
Although he praised the speed and low cost of the Quidsi website, Bezos did not mention that the deal is expected to bring some more eager users to Amazon: young female users.
Quidsi has said that about 80% of its 500,000 users are women. With the help of huge female users, the company has also developed two new websites specializing in selling household necessities and high-quality cosmetics.
Marc Lore, co-founder of Quidsi, said: "These mothers are the cornerstone of our users."
According to the Boston Consulting Group, women account for 72% of American consumption. But their share in online shopping is relatively small. According to comScore, an American Internet traffic monitoring agency, female users only account for 48.8% of Amazon users.
Specifically, only 46.4% are women aged 25 to 34. But this is the backbone of the user base.
Fiona Dias, Amazon's competitor and strategic director of GSI Business Company, an American e-commerce solution provider, said that research shows that women are even more reluctant to use Amazon Prime service, which charges $79 a year and can attract Amazon users to buy more goods from the website.
"Thanks to e-commerce, Amazon has done a good job in attracting male users." Diaz said, "but they have encountered difficulties in clothing and consumer goods. They really need to attract more women. "
Amazon has launched a series of measures to attract female users, including the "Mom Club" for young parents this summer, which provides high discounts for users who often buy diapers, rags and other basic items.
The next day, Quidsi also launched corresponding services for many regions in the United States, allowing users to combine orders from the company's three websites, thus enjoying free delivery service and increasing sales.
Amazon has just completed the acquisition of online shoe store Zappos, with a total amount of 1 1 billion dollars, providing users with free delivery and return. According to comScore, 62% of Zappos users are women.
Attracting more female users with these two websites will help Amazon strengthen its position in the field of online clothing sales, which has surpassed computers and software to become the first category of online shopping products.
In the United States, Amazon's strategy includes launching a footwear and clothing website called Endless and acquiring online fashion retailer Shopbog. Amazon has also adjusted the online sales of clothing and introduced some higher-end trading technologies developed by Endless. This summer, Amazon also acquired BuyVIP, a European fashion product "flash purchase" website.
The acquisition of Quidsi also intensified the competition between Amazon and Wal-Mart. Both companies are exploring the business of low-cost household necessities, hoping to attract users to visit their websites repeatedly. In addition, the profit rate of this kind of goods is also high.
Wal-Mart participated in the battle to sell diapers online, which is the only free product. This summer, the company also released the online sales business of household necessities and cosmetics, and gradually expanded to the field of packaged food.
Sucharita Mulpuru, an online retail industry analyst at Forrester, an American market research company, pointed out that the development of online shopping business may pose a potential threat to Wal-Mart's physical stores, because buying diapers is an important reason to attract young parents to other retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Target.
She said: "If you give these parents a reason to shop online, they will not go to physical stores again. And they go to physical stores, not just to buy diapers. "