Jeff Bezos has a knack for leveraging Amazon’s massively diverse worldwide customer base and online infrastructure toward making the most iconic brand in e-commerce almost instantly competitive amidst just about any field where he decides to compete. Hence, it doesn’t come as such a huge surprise that the company has launched the Amazon Vehicles community to provide research assistance to customers looking to browse both classic and new cars.
Customers already shop Amazon Automotive by the millions to choose from a plethora of replacement parts, tires, tools, and other goods for their cars. Amazon Vehicles is just an ideal funnel to help the website further rival Google Shopping as the first informational hub consumers instinctively trust when considering a purchase. After all, as Amazon Automotive director Adam Goetsch acknowledged, purchasing a vehicle is always “one of the most important, research-intensive purchases in [customers’] lives.”
Since consumers already shop Amazon so frequently to help maintain and improve their vehicles, perhaps an enthusiast community dedicated to asking and answering questions, submitting reviews, and sharing photos will deepen its members’ shared knowledge pool the way similar interest-based nooks have already gathered Amazon’s electronics customers together.
The move from growing the Amazon Vehicles community to one day selling cars themselves may not be far down the road. Then again, it may be one of Amazon’s steepest uphill climbs to date. The list of established leading online auto sale competitors unlikely to quietly take a back seat to such a titanic newcomer already includes Craigslist, TrueCar, AutoTrader, Cars.com, and eBay, just to scrape the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, Bezos himself would likely note that once you’ve stood toe-to-toe with Google, there isn’t much left to scare you into backing down.
