eBay and Amazon on Collision Course There was a time when eBay created a brand new business model, one of the most successful business models (Auctions) on the Internet, leading to high cash flows (eBay) with a very strong market share in their respective core market and with an image that was superior to any other business in this market segment.

It was possible to make a bargain superior to any other purchase: High quality combined with an excellent price.

Today making a purchase at eBay is no longer the same as it was a couple of years ago. Taking part in an auction has become a more and more frustrating experience resulting in high prices, low quality and an uncertain result - in my opinion it's just wasted time.

But over the time eBay has amassed a variety of products that is superior to that of Amazon. It's good fun to research products and even the most fancy product can be found at eBay. Bargains are still possible, espacially through sellers that offer a fixed price model.

This is at least one reason why the fixed price model is the fastest growing business on the eBay platform.

I found an excellent article on the NyTimes (Amid the Gloom, an E-Commerce War), that describes the current situation and collision of Ebay and Amazon.

And there is at least one other competitor in the market: Google!

• Google eBay Collision after eBay Live!

From a consumer perspective I appreciate this kind of collision competition, because usually it leads to better prices, higher quality and a better customer experience over all.

With the holiday season ahead and the ongoing financial crisis in mind consumers are becoming increasingly web-savvy in the way they look for bargains, as a current survey form Harris Interactive shows:

'Consumers are increasingly turning to the Internet to do their shopping. The majority of online adults (83%) are willing to make online purchases. Of those who make purchases online, the most popular items included:

• Books, 71%
• Music, 62%
• Electronics, 55%
• Gift certificates, 53%
• Clothing, 51%
• Travel, 50%
• Office supplies, 39%
• Health and beauty products, 34%'

'Eighty-five percent of online shoppers use tools or websites to find good deals online. Predictably, 56% of online shoppers are using search engines to find bargains; however, online shoppers have found many other ways to save, including:

• 32% use price comparison websites
• 25% use online coupon websites
• 23% use online advertisements
• 12% use bargain tracking websites
• 5% use shopping-themed social networks'

Assuming that just 7% of all retail purchases are made online there is plenty of room to invest and expand into eCommerce. I still think that eCommerce is moving "full steam ahead" and is years away from saturation.

• Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Labels: amazon, bizdev, ebay, ecommerce, google

  ¶ 'eBay and Amazon on Collision Course' posted by eA : 2:45 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Welcome to the Payments Club, Amazon FPS Started Today Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) designed as a Web-service tailored to the needs of developers launched on top of Amazon's reliable and scalable payment infrastructure. It claims to be flexible, inexpensive, reliable and secure, supports micro payments, enables 69 mio. active Amazon customers to use FPS and the most important, they have experience -- Amazon processes global payments for more than a decade now.

More than a year ago when I had the idea 'Why not Using Online-Payments to Checkout?' 37% of all US-bills were payed by check. Although it's very traditional in the US to pay by check I'm still convinced that there is a huge consumer demand for new payment technologies, including cash, checks, credit cards, debit cards, stored value cards and Internet banking.

Alternative payment platforms are already catching up among the top 200 e-commerce sites, Bill Me Later commanded 28 percent market share with PayPal and Google Checkout representing 26 percent and 13 percent, as a recent poll showed.

Amazon FPS complements other Amazon Web-services like S3 and EC2, offers code snippets in C#, Java, PHP, and Ruby code and with the progress of eCommerce it is a big step forward in terms leveraging the long tail – I'm excited what kind of services will make use of FPS.

It took Google 9 and 1/2 months after initial launch in the US and 3 weeks after being certified for e-money by the UK-based FSA to launch Google Checkout across Europe of course first in the UK.

I'm wondering when Amazon FPS will come to Europe.

Labels: amazon, bizdev, payments

  ¶ 'Welcome to the Payments Club, Amazon FPS Started' posted by eA : 12:09 PM  0 comments links to this post