The #1 reason large CPG brands underperform on Amazon EU is not the channel. It is who owns it inside the org. The role sits two levels too low, in the wrong function, controlling the wrong budget, on the wrong career path. Until that changes, every other lever is cosmetic.
The meeting was lost three months before it started.
A KAM walks into Amazon's office for the AVN. Forty-page deck. The cost-price ask was approved by their National Sales Director. The promo calendar was approved by Trade. The content roadmap was approved by Brand. The media plan was approved by Digital. Four sign-offs. One person at the table.
Across the room sits an Amazon vendor manager. Maybe the same one as last year. Maybe a new one — vendor managers rotate roughly every twelve months. Either way, the VM has the brand's last three negotiations, the AVS data, and a precise read of which lines the KAM can actually move and which ones require them to "check with finance."
Four hours later, cost prices land at minus 4.8%. Co-op accruals up. Promotional commitment up. The KAM leaves the room exhausted but proud — the opening Amazon ask was minus 7%.
Three months later, in the QBR, the brand is missing forecast. The KAM presents corrective actions. No one in the room — including the KAM — points back to that meeting. Because the meeting was not the problem. The org that sent the KAM into it is the problem.
Everyone owns Amazon. No one owns Amazon.
Bain has a line that summarises most CPG ecommerce orgs in eleven words: everyone owns ecommerce, yet no one owns ecommerce.
Read it twice. It is the entire diagnosis.
In most large CPG companies, Amazon decisions are owned by a committee that does not exist on any org chart. The KAM owns the relationship. National Sales owns cost price. Trade owns promo. Brand owns content. Digital owns media. Supply Chain owns availability. Finance owns terms. There is a Steerco that meets every six weeks where everyone presents and nothing is decided.
Profitero's 2024 Organizational Benchmark Study makes the gap measurable. Only 16% of brand respondents say their teams understand ecommerce best practices. Executives are nearly 2x more likely than their managers to think the team is competent. Translation: the people running Amazon know the org is broken. The people above them do not.
Committees do not lose to better-organized competitors. They lose to clarity.
The budget is the channel
One number worth burning into your retina.
Roughly 60% of large-CPG Amazon ad spend is funded out of shopper marketing budgets (Digiday). That money sits with a function whose KPIs were designed before Amazon Ads existed. The Trade Marketing Director who approves it was promoted for optimising in-store conversion at Carrefour, Edeka, or Tesco. Their scorecard rewards endcap ROI and gondola lift, not AMC attribution or share of search.
So the most consequential function in the brand's growth equation is staffed with people whose careers were built on a different game. They will starve Amazon of investment in Q4 to fund a Tesco end. Because that is what their bonus letter pays out on.
Now layer the growth rate. Retail media is the fastest-growing channel in CPG: +20% YoY (eMarketer). 62% of CPG marketers will increase retail media spend in H2 2025. Amazon takes roughly 77% of US retail media. The function controlling this budget is growing it, not redesigning the way it gets measured. They report ROAS, ignore brand metrics, and roll up to a Sales Director who sells to grocery.
Verdict: the growth lever is in the hands of the function least equipped to grow it. Until the budget moves out of Trade and into the Amazon P&L owner — with the closed-loop attribution Amazon Ads actually provides — every reorg is cosmetic.
The career path is the strategy
Look at your Amazon manager's LinkedIn. Then look at the EU vendor manager they negotiate with.
Amazon's Senior Vendor Manager EU is a multi-year, well-compensated post. It attracts senior commercial talent. It carries authority to commit Amazon to deals, to escalate inside Luxembourg, and to tank a category if the vendor disappoints.
The brand side, in most CPGs, is two career levels junior. The "Amazon Manager" role is a 2-to-3 year tour of duty for a high-potential KAM on the way to a National Sales Director job at a brick-and-mortar customer. It is a stepping stone. The person in the seat knows it. The team knows it. Amazon knows it.
This is the most under-discussed signal in commercial CPG. Career-path design is a public statement of how seriously you take the channel. If Amazon is a stepping stone, every other commercial decision will reflect that hierarchy. Headcount. Budget. Escalation rights. Board visibility. You will pay the cost forever, in a thousand quiet ways no one connects back to HR.
The brands compounding on Amazon EU made the same internal move at some point: they turned "Amazon Manager" from a temporary post into a senior, well-compensated career destination. EU Amazon Director → Head of Digital Commerce → C-suite. The role attracts operators who can run a real P&L. Vendor managers across the table treat them differently. The negotiation table changes. The forecast follows.
Pan-EU is a German team with translation services
Say that out loud at your next leadership offsite and watch the room get uncomfortable.
The structure is everywhere. A central pan-EU Amazon team in Munich, Frankfurt, or Hamburg. They optimise for the German shopper, the German vendor manager, the German trade calendar. Italy and Spain "have support." That word is doing a lot of work.
The shopper data alone breaks the model. Germans place ~39 Amazon orders a year. Spanish shoppers place ~18 (NIQ). Italian shoppers have an average basket of €46. Germans, €36. France's content and compliance norms differ from Germany's. Spain's promotional calendar is anchored to retailers and family holidays Germany does not observe. Italy's listing conversion drops 30 to 50% on copy translated from English or German rather than written natively.
When the central team allocates retail media spend proportional to revenue, Italy and Spain get systematically under-invested precisely because they are under-developed. The system reinforces itself. The southern European P&L grows slower. Headcount stays in the north. Next year's allocation confirms what last year's allocation decided.
Fixing this is structural, not motivational. A central CBU with EU P&L authority, plus embedded country leads in the actual markets — with veto rights on content, promo, and pricing in their market — and a single retail media planning function that allocates against shopper opportunity rather than historical revenue.
Three orbits. One gravity. Most pan-EU orgs run one orbit and call the rest "support."
What the right org actually looks like
The brands compounding on Amazon EU made the same structural decision in different orders.
Reckitt built an Amazon Centre of Global Excellence. Publicly announced. Cross-functional. Explicit P&L authority. Their team scaled Amazon revenue 146% while sustaining ROAS targets (Skai case study). The org change preceded the performance.
PepsiCo built a roughly 200-person ecommerce team that drives over $1B in annualised online sales. The team size is itself a credibility signal. This is not a side project.
What these orgs share — beyond size — is sequencing. CBU first. Then distributed center of excellence. Then embedded capability across functions. Profitero's data shows leading brands are 48% more likely to be fully integrated. But integration is the destination, not the starting line. Brands that skip the CBU phase and go straight to "everyone owns Amazon" recreate the Bain failure on a faster timeline.
The minimum viable Amazon EU org for a €50M+ business is smaller than most CMOs imagine. Six to seven people: an EU Amazon Lead at Director-plus level with P&L authority, two country KAMs covering DE/FR and IT/ES/PT clusters, one retail media planner, one vendor ops and supply chain interface, one content and catalogue manager with native-language QA. Cross-functional dotted lines into Brand and Trade. Pre-authorized concession latitude on cost price and accruals before the AVN, not after.
That structure costs less than a single Q4 promo overrun. Most orgs will not fund it because the budget is in Trade.
How a CEO can read the org from the dashboard
No consultant required. Five tells.
One. No single Amazon EU P&L exists. The number gets reconciled monthly from country systems by an analyst at quarter end.
Two. Amazon ROAS is reported. Amazon contribution margin is not.
Three. OTIF and ASN compliance do not appear on any executive dashboard. The silent killer of 1P margin lives there.
Four. Retail media spend is reported by country, not by channel. Clean signal of fragmented ownership.
Five. The person presenting Amazon results in the QBR is not the same person presenting Amazon strategy in the AOP. Strategy and execution are owned by different people. Neither owns it.
If three or more apply, the org is the problem. Not the team. Not the agency. Not the algorithm.
What you can move this quarter
Most readers cannot rebuild the org tomorrow. Three things you can move on this week.
Move the Amazon retail media line out of Trade and Shopper. Not next planning cycle. Now. The CFO will resist. The Trade Director will resist harder. Do it anyway. The closed-loop attribution Amazon already provides makes this defensible in any room with the data.
Name the EU Amazon owner. One name. Not a steering committee. Not a dotted line. A single director-plus-level operator with P&L authority, hire-fire on the team, and pre-approved concession latitude before the next AVN. If you cannot identify them in 30 seconds, that is your answer.
Make "Amazon Manager" a destination role, not a stepping stone. Repackage the title, reset the comp, draw the upward path inside digital commerce instead of out of it. Talent and Amazon's vendor managers will both register the change inside one cycle.
Three moves. None of them require a McKinsey deck. All of them outperform any agency engagement you will sign this year.
The question worth asking
On the way out of your next QBR, find the most senior person in the room. Ask: "Who owns Amazon EU at our company?"
If they need three sentences, you already have your diagnosis. If three names come out, the committee owns it. If they pause and look at someone else, that someone else owns it informally and unaccountably. None of those answers will produce the result you want next year.
The right answer is one name. That name has the budget, the P&L, the headcount authority, and a career path that ends inside the channel rather than on the way out of it.
Who is that person at your company?