Amazon, eBay: Headed for a Holiday Showdown

With economic recession in the air and layoffs everywhere, the outlook for online retail sales looks grim this holiday season. So far in November, online sales are 4 percent less than last year. Online retailers Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) will be fighting for every last Christmas dollar.

The two look more and more alike these days, as eBay seeks growth beyond the mom-and-pop auction sellers that everyone associates with the site. The company has been emphasizing fixed-price listings for a while now. But earlier this week it took another step towards wooing the types of merchants that you are still more likely to find on Amazon. On Monday, eBay quietly announced a new program in beta that will allow large merchants to list thousands of fixed-price items at once on the site.

This will no doubt give eBay’s core mom-and-pop auction sellers one more thing to complain about (like they need more competition from larger outfits). But what else can eBay do? Its main source of growth comes from its non-retail businesses like Skype. Its $945 million Bill Me Later acquisition is now looking suspect. And its overall ability to attract consumers has stagnated. According to comScore, eBay had 70.7 million unique U.S. visitors in October, down 11 percent from the year before. In contrast, Amazon had 60.1 million unique U.S. visitors in October, up 6 percent (see chart above).

The reality is that any merchant selling online will list their items for sale in multiple locations — on Amazon, eBay, their own Websites, etc. (Multi-channel e-commerce management service Mercent, for example, is already supporting eBay’s API for its online retail customers).

Now, with this new API we might see some interesting mixing and matching. An online retailer, for instance, can now list her items on eBay and use Amazon’s fulfillment API to ship the orders from an Amazon warehouse.

Don’t underestimate the importance of these APIs in the battle to dominate e-commerce. Whoever controls the flow of transaction information, will control the flow of goods online.

Original post

Comments

[User 265729:]

As a consumer of Amazon, I really enjoy shopping on their site. It may be tough for them to make it through the next few months, but we'll need to wait and see.

I notice that the U.S. Department of Commerce comes out with these amazingly high consumer-spending stats, and then revises them downward the next month.

Is there any truth to the rumor that the Patriot Act and Executive Order allows the Department of Commerce, Treasury, SEC, etc falsify data (including 10K's) as a "national security" issue? When everyone is broke on the street, how will they hide that?

I digress… I think Amazon will fare much better than other stores…

2008 Nov 26 03:04 PM

[deals search:]

With economic recession in the air and layoffs everywhere, watch out for craigslist. People will be looking seriously into buying used stuff specially electronics, cars and furniture

2008 Nov 27 03:24 AM

[Et tu, Brute!:]

Agree with deals search.

I have had a booth at craft fairs the past two weekends and am getting ready for one this Black Friday weekend. The past two weeks have been excellent business!

Folks looking for the extra special and unique at a reasonable price!

2008 Nov 27 09:57 AM

[Dinah Balk:]

Happy Thanksgiving Et tu Brute!

Where I live we have 1st Friday & 3rd Saturday Art Walks. Vendors who sell handcrafted Florida style items are doing really great but the vendors who sell cheap junk (especially SMC stuff) are doing lousy.

This tells me buyers want good quality at affordable prices.

2008 Nov 27 04:26 PM

[Et tu, Brute!:]

Happy Thanksgiving, Dinah!

Yes, buyers are spending, but taking great care and choosing the special and unique. There may be a recession coming but for NOW the money is there, but being spent with very choice decisions.

Junk and dime-a-dozen goodies are definitely OUT!

2008 Nov 28 02:02 AM

[susansong:]

And the race is on! I'm betting on Amazon.

2008 Dec 01 07:30 PM