By John Winning

Affiliate marketing is an integral part of our marketing strategy, but it’s often one that confuses customers and our suppliers. In short: affiliate marketing, for us, is where external sites refer customers to our site for a portion of the sale value (never more than 3 per cent).

At present we work very closely with the leading Australian Comparison Shopping Engines like Getprice.com.au and MyShopping.com.au as well as other product-focused sites like ProductReview.com.au. These sites allow consumers to compare prices across various suppliers, as well as collecting reviews about the different stores.

Recently we’ve been approached by several marketplace sites looking to partner with us. One that stands out is Zanui.com.au – an aggregator of products and suppliers with one key difference to other affiliates: they own the pre- and post-sale communications, the checkout/transaction process and the delivery of products. This means that we, as a merchant, would have little or no interaction with the customer.

We’ve seen many start-ups like this before: they move heavily into the market and sell to merchants on the premise that if they don’t take up a property on their marketplace as a supplier, their competitors will. In this case, our competitors will undoubtedly start selling their products through Zanui, but we’re not concerned.

We believe that we’re large enough to stand-alone in the industry now, and don’t feel intimidated by considerable marketing budgets of other groups or new players for several reasons:

-We will always own our pre- and post-sale communication, the transaction process and the delivery: it’s the only way we can continue to promise the highest levels of service possible.

-Competitors that do take up opportunities on marketplace sites like this are most likely not as concerned about service and the customer experience as we are, so we don’t see them as a threat to our core business offering.

-Selling through marketplace sites only dilutes our brand and confuses the customer: we’re confident about who we are as a company and as individuals, and we won’t risk altering how we’re perceived in the market.

-Partner relationships like these have the potential to upset suppliers, who are just as important to us as our customers and staff.

I wouldn’t usually name a specific company in this way, but after meeting with Zanui I thought it was appropriate to state why our businesses won’t be partnering with them or other marketplace sites, especially as they claim to be moving so heavily into the market. We wish them all the best and will be keeping a close eye on this space this year.

Click here to read Zanui.com.au's response to this column.

This is an abridged version of a column originally featured at winning.com.au. John Winning is the CEO of Appliances Online and Big Brown Box.