Business Talk – Amazon’s Robert Koen shares the biggest trends from the first Prime Day in South Africa
In this Business Talk with Michael Avery interview, Robert Koen discusses Amazon South Africa’s first Prime Day – including the biggest trends from the event.
Koen is the Amazon Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa and boasts nearly three decades of experience working in complex markets.
He has worked at Amazon for nearly 12 years and, during this time, held multiple leadership positions before his current post, which he assumed in 2023.
This included working as the Director for Buy with Prime and as a member of the USA Partner Network, overseeing AWS.
More recently, he has been instrumental in the rollout of the Amazon e-commerce offering in South Africa.
Before joining Amazon, Koen worked as the Head of Americas and Asia Pacific for TIBCO Software Inc. and before that, as the Vice President and General Manager for LanguageLine Solutions.
Additionally, Koen spent over seven years at Genesys, where he held positions including Senior Director and Client Director EMEA, and six years at IBM, where he served as a Client Executive and Distributor Manager.
The experience and skills Koen has accumulated from these various positions have been instrumental in his oversight of the highly successful launch of Amazon in South Africa.
Koen holds a Master’s degree in Marketing from the Alliance Manchester Business School and a BCom (Honours) in Finance and Marketing from the University of Witwatersrand.
The interview
In this Business Talk interview, Koen discusses Amazon’s first Prime Day in South Africa and the buying trends he observed among South African customers.
Koen highlights how customers engaged with Amazon’s Flash Deals and whether Prime Day attracted many new customers.
He also outlines the biggest lessons Amazon South Africa learned from their first-ever Prime Day in the country.
Koen concludes the interview by sharing what he would do differently or add for the next Prime Day.
Watch the interview with Robert Koen below.
Loading ...