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Foul terms: Amazon botched market entry in Sweden

2020-10-28T16:56:47.803Z


Amazon launches in Sweden, albeit with a strangely unprofessional Internet portal: instead of Sweden's flag, that of Argentina appears, and users laugh at embarrassing translation errors.


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Photo: Steven Senne / AP

The US online giant Amazon also launched its own Swedish-language website in Sweden on Wednesday.

Much did not go smoothly, however.

Some of the early adopters made fun of numerous spelling and translation errors.

The overpowering US group therefore received a portion of ridicule from competitor Pricerunner, a shopping site popular in Sweden.

Pricerunner boss Nicklas Storakers described Amazon's market entry as completely "screwed up".

He also shared his amazement with the Breakit portal that the Americans had given up the usual opening bargains for the launch of the site.

The list of minor and major mishaps is long.

Among other things, the website now showed the flag of Argentina instead of a Swedish flag.

The quality of the translations was also astonishingly unprofessional for a multi-billion dollar corporation: users complained that instead of the correct Swedish word for cock, Amazon was using a term that is actually used in Swedish to denote male genitals.

Some users vented their anger - but also their amusement - on Twitter.

The group responded with a PR phrase: They wanted to "thank everyone who has drawn attention to these problems and help us to improve Amazon.se," said a company spokeswoman.

Amazon advertises that it can deliver 150 million products from 30 categories in Sweden.

Trade expert Daniel Schmidt from the major bank Danske criticized the offer.

He called it a kind of "Amazon light".

Schmidt said that Amazon will not be as dominant in Sweden as it is in the USA, Germany or Great Britain: "It is something different to enter the market in Sweden in 2020 than in Germany or England 20 years ago."

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beb / Reuters

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2020-10-28

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