Two years ago, if you asked an Australian why they bought something on Amazon instead of somewhere else, two thirds of them said price. According to our 2026 Marketplace Consumer Report, that number is now 38%.
A 28% point drop in two years is not a rounding error. It is a different market.
What replaced it is less dramatic and more useful. People now say they buy from Amazon because it is easier (36%), because it is faster (35%), because they have Prime (31%), or because they simply prefer buying from Amazon (28%). Product reviews are up to 24%. Across marketplaces generally, one in three Australians say ease of use and delivery speed are the main reasons they shop there at all.
Price did not stop mattering. It stopped separating anyone.
Temu reset what Australians expect to pay for a large slice of the market. Amazon answered with Haul. Shein kept expanding out of fashion.
When every major platform is visibly cheap, price stops being a reason to choose one over another, and the decision moves to whatever is left. That turns out to be speed, certainty and convenience.
44% Australians say they would choose Amazon over Temu for the same product at a higher price, purely because Amazon would get it to them faster. That is people knowingly paying more, in a tight economy, to avoid waiting.
You can see the same instinct in the platform data. Temu is still used by 47% of Australians, but its growth has dramatically slowed down compared to previous years, up just 2% YoY and its slowest since entering the market.
Convenience is now a set of operational facts
Here is the part brands tend to skip. Convenience is not a brand attribute. It is a series of things that either happen or do not – whether the item is in stock the day someone wants it, whether it arrives when the page said it would, whether the returns process takes four minutes or forty, among others.
Two thirds of shoppers believe that an easy returns process is critical to their experience, and more than a third had a problem with a refund or return in the past year. Those failures compound. A slow delivery is annoying. A slow delivery followed by a difficult return is the end of the relationship.
For brands selling on Amazon, most of that experience is determined by decisions made months earlier – fulfilment method, forecasting, whether you hold enough stock through a Prime event, or whether your listing is even winning the Buy Box.
Prime is the reason this happened
Prime access now reaches 66% of Australians when you include members, people using someone else’s account, and those planning to join in the next 12 months. In 2021, that number was 46%.
Once two thirds of a market has free fast delivery already paid for, delivery speed stops being a feature and becomes an expectation. Everything slower than Prime feels slow, including your own website. That is the real competitive pressure, and it is not one you can discount your way out of.
It shows up in behaviour. Australians buying on Amazon multiple times a week has risen to 8%, multiple times a month to 11%, and daily purchasing to 3%, while infrequent buying declines. 14% expect to spend a lot more on Amazon in 2026, the highest in five years, and only 10% expect to spend less. Amazon has moved from a place people go when they want something cheap to a place people go by default.
What this means for how you compete
Stop leading with price and start leading with certainty. If your marketplace strategy is built on being the cheapest listing, you are competing in the one dimension where Temu and Shein have structurally lower costs than you do. Availability, delivery reliability and clear, accurate product information are the levers that actually move the 2026 shopper, and they are levers a brand can control.
Treat trust as a conversion asset. 64% of Australians name Amazon as the marketplace they trust most for product quality, up 7% YoY, and that trust is inherited by whoever is on the page. The seller name now strongly influences 25% of purchase decisions, up from 21%, and only 7% say it makes no difference at all. If your product is being sold by an unfamiliar third party with old imagery and a price you did not set, you are borrowing against that trust rather than building on it.
Build for the repeat purchase, not the first sale. 53% of Australians bought a product on Amazon in the past year they had never bought there before, and 49% bought from a brand they had never bought from before. That is an enormous trial volume. The brands that convert it into revenue are the ones with reviews, consistent availability and replenishment mechanics like “Subscribe and Save” in place before the trial happens, not after.
The cost of not being there
When Australians go to Amazon looking for a specific brand and cannot find it, they usually go for a comparable product from a brand they have never heard of, and fewer of them go looking elsewhere than in previous years.
The shopper who cannot find you does not pause. They substitute, on the spot, in favour of whoever showed up. In a market where price no longer decides and convenience does, simply being present and reliable at the moment of need is a bigger competitive advantage than any promotion you could run.
For the full picture of how Australians are shopping in 2026, including category-level data on where purchase intent is moving, download the 2026 Marketplace Consumer Report, or get in touch and we will walk you through what it means for your category.
