For Australian businesses, Amazon’s international expansion — which now includes more than a dozen countries — has brought with it hasty pivots and familiar feelings of enthusiasm, doubt and existential dread.
But people who posted on social media about Amazon’s debut were generally underwhelmed, with prospective Australian customers playfully pointing out lackluster product offerings and uncompetitive pricing.
One New York Times reporter spotted a pair of shoes listed in the website’s cookware section, a sign of the site’s growing pains.
Some compared Amazon’s unremarkable Australian debut with that of another digital giant: Netflix. When that service arrived in Australia in 2015, it offered a notably leaner offering of its streaming-on-demand product, especially in comparison with its American lineup.
