This is not an incremental shift. It is a tectonic one. The data, the consumer behaviour signals, and the brand investment patterns we are observing all point to a single, urgent conclusion: the playbook that worked on eBay's C2C-first, search-driven model does not transfer to Amazon's logistics-powered, Prime-centric ecosystem. Australian retailers who fail to adapt their digital strategy — their creative, their conversion architecture, their paid media approach — will find themselves increasingly invisible to the very consumers they spent years acquiring.
At LVRA Global, we have been tracking this shift throughout 2023 across our client portfolio spanning Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, and Perth. This report synthesises the market intelligence, platform data, and strategic analysis our teams have compiled. Our intent is not merely to describe what has happened — but to provide Australian retail brands with an actionable framework for what must happen next.
The Numbers That Define the Shift
Before we analyse strategy, let us establish the factual foundation of this report. The following metrics, drawn from platform data, third-party analytics, and consumer research conducted throughout 2023, form the baseline from which every strategic recommendation in this report derives.
Section 1: How Amazon AU Won the Marketplace War
To understand where we are in late 2023, we need to understand the five-year arc that brought us here. When Amazon launched in Australia in December 2017, the local industry largely dismissed it as an overdue entrant entering a market already served by a mature eBay ecosystem and domestic players like Kogan, Catch, and Big W Online. The sceptics pointed to Amazon's limited local inventory, its absence of Prime, and its unfamiliarity with Australian consumer preferences.
Those sceptics were wrong. Amazon played a long game, and in 2023, that game reached its inflection point.
1.1 The Prime Flywheel Arrives in Australia
Amazon Prime launched locally in June 2018 at AUD $6.99 per month (later repriced to $9.99). It was, by global standards, relatively modest. But what it represented was the activation of Amazon's core competitive moat in the Australian market: the Prime flywheel. Prime members do not simply buy more — they restructure their purchasing behaviour around the Amazon ecosystem. By the end of 2023, Prime penetration has reached 45% of Australian households, with adoption rates accelerating among the 25-44 demographic that drives the majority of discretionary retail spend.
The data is particularly striking at the top of the income curve: 80% of households earning $200,000 or more now shop on Amazon AU regularly. This is the cohort that retail brands most want to reach — and they are increasingly unreachable through eBay's search-driven, discount-first environment.
Source: SimilarWeb Platform Analytics, Nielsen Digital Content Ratings, Amazon AU Seller Central Data — Q3 2023
1.2 The FBA Infrastructure Advantage
The second decisive factor in Amazon's 2023 dominance is one that receives far less coverage in the marketing press but matters enormously to the brands we work with: Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA). Amazon's investment in Australian logistics infrastructure — warehouses in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, with a Perth hub opening in late 2023 — has created a fulfilment capability that eBay, as a pure marketplace intermediary, simply cannot replicate.
FBA does more than move parcels. It generates the 'Prime badge,' which in 2023 is the single most powerful purchase trigger on the platform. Our internal data from LVRA's e-commerce clients shows that Prime-eligible listings convert at 2.7x the rate of equivalent non-Prime listings. The Prime badge is, in effect, a trust signal that replaces the function previously served by brand reputation alone.
eBay's response — its Authenticity Guarantee programme and expanded buyer protection — is meaningful, but it addresses a different problem. Amazon has not won on trust alone; it has won on the combination of trust plus convenience plus speed. That triad is the new baseline expectation for Australian online shoppers in 2023.
1.3 eBay's Structural Vulnerabilities
eBay's challenge in 2023 is not one of execution — it remains an extraordinarily large, well-resourced platform. Its challenge is one of architecture. eBay was built as a C2C marketplace: a platform where individuals sell to individuals, discovery is driven by search queries, and price is the primary competitive variable. That model served Australian consumers well for two decades.
But the Australian consumer of 2023 is fundamentally different from the consumer of 2013. Today's shopper does not open eBay to browse; they open it with a specific item in mind, at a specific price point, and they are largely unwilling to wait more than 48 hours for delivery. Amazon's architecture was built precisely for this behaviour. eBay's was not.
eBay's 2023 traffic figure of 50.8 million average monthly visits is not embarrassing — it is enormous. But the trajectory is what matters. Amazon's visits grew 32% year-over-year. eBay's grew 4%. The compound effect of that divergence, sustained over three to five years, will reshape the Australian retail landscape in ways that are already visible to brands paying attention.
Section 2: What This Means for Australian Retail Brands
The marketplace shift we have described is not merely a platform story. It is a brand strategy story. The question for Australian retail brands in late 2023 is not 'should we be on Amazon?' — that question was answered some time ago. The question is: 'What does our digital presence need to look like in a world where Amazon sets the benchmark for speed, trust, and conversion?'
2.1 The Brand-Owned Store Imperative
Here is the paradox that Amazon's dominance has created: the platform that has won the marketplace war is also the platform most likely to commoditise your brand. Amazon's search algorithm rewards price competitiveness and review volume. It does not reward brand narrative, product story, or customer relationship. A brand that exists only on Amazon is, over time, a brand in a race to the lowest margin.
The most sophisticated Australian retail brands we work with at LVRA understand this intuitively. They use Amazon AU as a customer acquisition channel — not as their brand home. The brand home is their owned website: a digital storefront built to match or exceed Amazon's UX efficiency while delivering what Amazon cannot — brand depth, community, and lifetime value.
In 2023, that brand-owned store must meet a non-negotiable set of technical and experiential standards. Page load time under 3 seconds on mobile. A product discovery experience that rivals Amazon's recommendation engine. A checkout flow with fewer than four steps. Trust signals — reviews, guarantees, secure payment badges — integrated at every friction point. These are not 'nice to have' features. They are table stakes in a market where Amazon has trained consumers to expect nothing less.
2.2 The Conversion Gap That Is Costing Australian Retailers
We are seeing a pattern across Australian retail in 2023 that concerns us: brands that have invested heavily in driving traffic — through Google Shopping, Meta ads, influencer campaigns — but whose websites are converting at 1.2% to 1.8%, against an industry benchmark of 2.5% to 3.5% for brand-owned e-commerce stores in this market.
That conversion gap is not a traffic problem. It is a CRO problem. And in the context of Amazon's dominance, it is a problem with an increasingly urgent cost. Every percentage point of conversion rate improvement on a site receiving 100,000 monthly visitors — at an average order value of $80 — represents an additional $80,000 in monthly revenue. The maths of CRO have always been compelling. In 2023, they are existential.
*Amazon's conversion rate is not directly comparable due to logged-in, Prime-habituated user base. Included for benchmarking context only. Source: Baymard Institute, Statista AU E-Commerce Reports, LVRA Client Analytics 2023.
2.3 Paid Media in the Amazon Era
The second strategic implication of Amazon's rise concerns paid media allocation. In 2023, the brands winning in the Australian market are running a two-track paid strategy: Amazon Sponsored Products and Amazon DSP for marketplace capture, combined with Google Shopping and Performance Max campaigns driving high-intent traffic directly to their brand-owned stores.
The worst-performing brands are doing one or the other — rarely both. Brands that invest only in Amazon advertising are building marketplace share on a platform that controls their customer data. Brands that invest only in driving traffic to their brand site — without a presence in Amazon's search results — are invisible to the 75 million monthly visitors who start their shopping journey on Amazon AU.
The optimal media mix for Australian retail brands in Q4 2023, based on LVRA's portfolio analysis, allocates approximately 35-40% of paid media budget to Amazon (Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, DSP), 30-35% to Google (Shopping, Performance Max, Search), 15-20% to Meta (Prospecting and Retargeting), and 10-15% to emerging channels including TikTok Shop and Pinterest Shopping.
Section 3: The Competitive Landscape — Kogan, Catch, and the Niche Strategy
While Amazon and eBay dominate the headline narrative, Australian retail's competitive landscape in 2023 is more nuanced than a two-horse race. The responses of domestic players to Amazon's rise offer instructive lessons for brand strategy.
3.1 Kogan's Vertical Integration Play
Kogan.com's strategic response to Amazon's dominance has been textbook: instead of competing head-to-head on breadth, Kogan has deepened its vertical integration. In 2023, Kogan's private label range accounts for approximately 31% of total revenue — a margin-protective strategy that Amazon cannot easily replicate for third-party sellers. Kogan First, the platform's subscription programme, had reached approximately 350,000 members by mid-2023, representing a meaningful loyalty base.
Kogan's 2023 annual report reveals a brand executing a deliberate pivot away from low-margin electronics commodities toward higher-margin categories including health and wellness, home goods, and travel. This is precisely the kind of category strategy that Amazon's breadth makes difficult to execute at scale — and precisely why Kogan remains viable in Amazon's shadow.
3.2 Catch's Owned-Brand Pivot
Catch.com.au, owned by Wesfarmers since 2019, has pursued a different but equally instructive strategy. The platform has leaned into its Catch Club membership programme and its grocery and everyday essentials category — ground on which Amazon's Fresh offering remains underdeveloped in Australia relative to the US and UK markets.
For brand manufacturers selling through Catch, the platform's Wesfarmers integration — with Bunnings, Kmart, Target, and Officeworks — represents a distribution network that Amazon cannot match through online channels alone. This omnichannel reality is one that Amazon continues to underestimate in the Australian market, where physical retail remains robust relative to many comparable economies.
3.3 The Lesson: Niche Depth Beats Breadth Competition
The clear strategic lesson from watching Kogan and Catch navigate Amazon's rise is this: the brands that survive and grow in Amazon's shadow are those that build depth in specific verticals rather than attempting to match Amazon's breadth. For retail brands, this means owning a category narrative — in content, in community, in product curation — that Amazon's algorithm-first model cannot replicate.
This is equally true for brand-owned digital stores. The best-performing Australian brand stores we work with in 2023 are not trying to be mini-Amazons. They are building brand experiences — editorial content, loyalty communities, personalised recommendations — that create reasons to buy direct that go beyond price and convenience.
Section 4: The 2023 Australian Consumer — Behaviours and Expectations
No marketplace strategy operates in isolation from consumer behaviour. The 2023 Australian online shopper has been shaped by five years of Amazon conditioning, two years of pandemic-accelerated digital adoption, and twelve months of cost-of-living pressure that has made value-consciousness a defining characteristic of the market.
4.1 The Mobile-First Mandate
Australian mobile commerce is growing at a rate that continues to surprise even experienced observers. In 2023, mobile devices account for 61% of all Australian e-commerce sessions, with that figure reaching 78% on Amazon AU's platform. The implication is straightforward: a brand-owned store that is not genuinely mobile-optimised — not merely responsive, but designed mobile-first — is operating at a structural disadvantage.
The distinction between 'responsive' and 'mobile-first' matters here. A responsive site adapts a desktop layout to smaller screens. A mobile-first site is designed from the ground up for the thumb-driven, single-hand navigation patterns of the mobile user. In 2023, Google's Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift — have made mobile performance a direct ranking factor. Slow mobile sites are invisible mobile sites.
4.2 The Trust Economy
2023 has intensified something we have been tracking for several years: the centralisation of trust signals in online retail. Australian consumers in 2023 are more sceptical of unknown brands than at any point in the past decade, and more reliant on third-party validation — reviews, ratings, social proof — than on branded advertising.
This is Amazon's structural gift to the market: five years of Prime conditioning has trained Australian consumers to expect a minimum of four-star average ratings, fast and free delivery, and frictionless returns as prerequisites for purchase consideration. The brand-owned store that does not meet these expectations is not competing with Amazon — it is simply losing to it.
The review economy data from 2023 is instructive: 93% of Australian online consumers report that reviews influence their purchase decisions, with 68% stating they will not purchase from a site with fewer than ten recent reviews. For brand stores, this means review acquisition — through post-purchase email sequences, loyalty programme incentives, and social proof integration — is a non-negotiable growth lever, not a marketing add-on.
4.3 The Value-Conscious Shopper
Australia's cost-of-living crisis, which intensified through 2022 and remains acute in 2023, has created a consumer cohort that is simultaneously more demanding and more price-sensitive than at any recent point. The RBA's rate-hiking cycle — which brought the cash rate from 0.10% in April 2022 to 4.35% by November 2023 — has compressed discretionary spending across income brackets.
The consequence for retail brands is a more complex promotional landscape. Deep discounting, which Amazon's marketplace architecture encourages, erodes margin and trains customers to wait for sales. The alternative — communicating value beyond price, through content, through community, through brand story — is a harder path but a more sustainable one. The brands in our portfolio that have invested in brand-owned content in 2023 are experiencing 34% higher repeat purchase rates than those relying primarily on promotional tactics.
Section 5: The LVRA Framework — Building Your Brand in Amazon's Shadow
Throughout this report, we have described a market that is moving fast, with structural forces that reward brands willing to invest in digital maturity. At LVRA Global, we work with Australian and New Zealand retail brands at precisely this inflection point — helping them build the digital architecture that competes in an Amazon-dominated market without ceding their brand identity to the platform.
Our approach synthesises three disciplines that are most critical in the 2023 landscape: Web Design & CRO, Paid Media & PPC, and the data infrastructure that connects them. Here is how we operationalise this for our clients.
Section 6: Strategic Recommendations for Australian Retail Brands — Q4 2023
Based on the market analysis in this report, LVRA's strategic recommendations for Australian retail brands entering Q4 2023 are as follows. These are not generic best practices — they are prioritised interventions for the specific competitive environment that Amazon's rise has created.
Recommendation 1: Conduct an Immediate Platform Audit
Before allocating any additional budget, conduct a comprehensive audit of your current platform presence. Where do you rank in Amazon AU search results for your primary category keywords? What is your seller rating, review velocity, and Prime eligibility rate? What percentage of your sales are occurring on Amazon versus your owned store? These numbers should be on your CEO's dashboard in 2023. If they are not, the first intervention is establishing the measurement infrastructure.
Recommendation 2: Invest in CRO Before You Invest in Traffic
The single highest-ROI intervention for the majority of Australian retail brands we work with is conversion rate optimisation on their brand-owned store — ahead of incremental investment in paid media. A site converting at 1.5% that receives 50,000 monthly visitors generates 750 transactions. A site converting at 3.0% with the same traffic generates 1,500 — without spending an additional dollar on acquisition. In 2023's margin-compressed environment, CRO is the most efficient lever available.
Recommendation 3: Build Your Amazon Presence as a Customer Acquisition Channel
Amazon AU is not optional for Australian retail brands in 2023. But it must be framed correctly: it is a customer acquisition channel, not a brand home. Your Amazon presence should be optimised for discovery and first purchase. Your brand-owned store should be optimised for retention, lifetime value, and community. The customer journey from Amazon to owned-store is one of the most valuable conversion flows in Australian retail — and almost no brand is deliberately engineering it.
Recommendation 4: Prioritise Mobile Experience Above All Else
If there is a single non-negotiable technical intervention for Australian retail brands in Q4 2023, it is mobile experience. Your site must load in under 3 seconds on a 4G connection. Your product images must be optimised for small screens. Your checkout must be completable with one hand, in under 60 seconds. These are not aspirational targets — they are the minimum requirements for competing in a market where 61% of sessions and 54% of purchases are occurring on mobile devices.
Recommendation 5: Activate Post-Purchase Email Flows Immediately
The cheapest customer you will ever acquire is the one you already have. In 2023, the majority of Australian retail brands are underinvesting in post-purchase email — the sequence of automated communications that transforms a first-time buyer into a repeat customer. A well-designed post-purchase flow — thank you, shipping confirmation, delivery confirmation, review request, cross-sell, loyalty invitation — can increase 90-day repeat purchase rates by 35-50%. For a brand generating $2M in annual online revenue, that represents $700,000 to $1M in additional revenue from existing customers.
Conclusion: The 2024 Imperative
We are writing this in Q4 2023, and the trajectory is clear. Amazon AU's dominance is not a peak — it is a baseline from which the platform will continue to expand into categories, services, and markets that are not yet on most retailers' radar. Amazon Fresh, Amazon Pharmacy, Amazon Business: each of these represents a vertical that has already transformed its category in the US and UK, and each is at an early stage in Australia.
The Australian retail brands that enter 2024 in the strongest competitive position will be those that have done three things in 2023: built a brand-owned digital presence that can compete with Amazon on UX while surpassing it on brand depth; activated a paid media strategy that works across both marketplace and owned channels simultaneously; and invested in the customer retention infrastructure — email, loyalty, community — that makes their existing customer base a compounding asset rather than a one-time transaction.
The window for building these capabilities before Amazon's next expansion phase closes is narrow. The time to act is now.
Sources & Methodology
This report draws on the following primary and secondary data sources, all referenced as of Q4 2023:
SimilarWeb Platform Analytics: Australian marketplace monthly visit data, Q1–Q3 2023 averages
Nielsen Digital Content Ratings Australia: Consumer demographics and platform usage behaviour, 2023
Australia Post eCommerce Industry Report 2023: Mobile commerce share, average order value benchmarks
Baymard Institute E-Commerce UX Benchmarks: Conversion rate, cart abandonment, and checkout flow data
Roy Morgan Consumer Research: Prime and subscription programme penetration, income segmentation
Google Core Web Vitals Documentation: Mobile performance standards and ranking implications, 2023
LVRA Global Client Analytics: Aggregated, anonymised performance data from Australian e-commerce clients, 2023
Kogan.com 2023 Annual Report: Platform GMV, private label revenue, and subscriber data
IBISWorld Australian Online Retail Report 2023: Market size, growth trajectory, and competitive landscape
Reserve Bank of Australia: Cash rate history and consumer confidence data, 2022–2023
LVRA Global Intelligence Reports are produced for informational and strategic planning purposes. All data is sourced from publicly available research and LVRA's proprietary client analytics. Market projections represent LVRA's analytical assessment and should not be construed as financial advice.
Sources
· Grand View Research: Lead Generation Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report, 2023
· HubSpot State of Marketing Report 2023
· Forrester B2B Marketing & Sales Alignment Survey 2023
· Sopro B2B Lead Generation Statistics 2023
· LinkedIn Marketing Solutions: B2B Benchmark Report 2023
· Bombora Intent Data: Category research signal data, Q1–Q3 2023
· Gartner B2B Buying Behaviour Survey 2023
· SalesLoft & Outreach.io Platform Benchmarks 2023
· LVRA Global Client Analytics: Aggregated, anonymised campaign performance data across eight markets, 2023