US Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc plans to expand its footprint in new markets by revamping its international e-commerce platform, a media report said today.
“Amazon says it plans to revamp its international e-commerce platform to make it easier for the company to reach customers in new markets,” British daily Financial Times reported.
The company has set up a new team that will create “the architectural underpinnings to greatly simplify country expansions” by translating content into different languages and adjusting taxes, prices and delivery options to better suit customers’ locations, the report noted.
The move underlines the increasing globalisation of online retailing, with companies such as Walmart, the world’s largest retailer by sales, and US clothing retailer Gap looking to use e-commerce sites and cross-border shipping to reach a wider audience.
Amazon operates websites in Canada, China, Japan, the UK, Germany and France and offers customers ordering from other countries the ability to pay for purchases in their own currencies.
According to the publication, the retailer now seeks to recruit senior software engineers for what it says is “a new team... that is gearing up to make a substantial impact on how Amazon does business around the world“.
The team is “tackling interesting problems like rendering content in multiple languages and calculating tax, price and shipping variations on the fly based on the customer’s preferred shipping destination”, it added.
