(Part 2) Amazon vs eBay. Selling on Amazon or selling on eBay? Which is the best option for online vendors

Coming from Online retailing Amazon vs eBay. Selling on Amazon or selling on eBay? Which is the best option for online vendors (Part 1)


• Fulfillment by Amazon:

Since the beginning, Amazon invested heavily on automated fulfillment and distribution centers. This is one of the main reasons eBay has been able to expand faster (geographically) than Amazon. eBay is a 100% online business while Amazon has to invest time and resources to build its fulfillment centers. Anyway, coming back to the point of view of an online vendor this is a very important difference between the two platforms: Amazon offers the possibility to outsource the fulfillment (storing, picking, packing and shipping) while eBay doesn’t. Amazon calls this service “Fulfillment by Amazon FBA”

• Return policy / Guarantee:

This is one of the most important differences between the two platforms: Amazon has a full guarantee designed to protect the buyer while eBay does not. This might not seem too important but it is on the long run, because it’s a way to autoselect the kind of buyers and sellers you want to have in your marketplace. Amazon’s guarantee is the “A-to-Z Guarantee protection”.
The guarantee obliges any seller to refund or resend the item to the buyer in the event of a claim. This is designed to offer confidence to buyers so they know that they anything they buy on Amazon or from an Amazon third party seller will be as described. Sellers that don’t comply with Amazon’s minimum ratios of client service, by failing consistently to refund/resend items to buyers eventually will not be allowed to sell on Amazon. This means that only good quality service sellers will be allowed to remain selling on Amazon. What Amazon is doing with this is very clear: It’s eliminating one of the most important reasons that kept buyers from buying online, which is fraud/forgery. eBay does not function like this at all, eBay is not responsible of what the seller does or sells. This is why there have been so many claims of false luxury goods of the most prestigious brands being sold on eBay but the problem continues. The way buyers can penalize bad sellers in eBay is through reputation (giving a bad feedback) or through eBay’s Resolution Center which depending on the case and the allegations, can take some time.

All this explanation of the way each platform tries to protect its buyers from forgery/fraud is just to show you how it directly affects the sellers. Sellers of fake items or items with a very low quality won’t go to Amazon because they know that they will have to pay the buyers in case of claims or they will be kicked out of the marketplace. The outcome of the guarantee, besides obviously protecting buyers, is that Amazon is self-selecting good quality sellers for its platform.

SELLERS Perspective	Amazon	eBay
Fees	MORE EXPENSIVE - Listing Fee: Low for volume - Commisions: High 15% Better for high volume // High rotation items	CHEAPER - Listing Fee: Low for individual listings - Commisions: Low 8% Better for High price // Low rotation items
Format	Fixed Price Format	Fixed price + Auction Auction: Better for Antiques and Collectibles. Ebay moving into Fixed Price direction
Average sale Price	BETTER Buyers pay more on average for the same items	WORSE More price competition
Payment Methods	LESS OPTIONS BUT EASIER TO MANAGE If Amazon can't collect the payment, the seller doesn't have a sale, and the item remains listed.	MORE OPTIONS BUT MORE COSTLY eBay sellers can accept PayPal, money orders, cashier's checks or cash. However, they're responsible for managing collections, which means investing more time and labor into each transaction.
Return Policy	WORSE Tight claim and quality control. If many clients solicit returns, they can be kicked out of Amazon	BETTER Not obliged to return. The only penalty could be a bad feedback
Shipping / Fulfillment	BETTER Amazon fixes the shipping credit, per category, regardless of what actually the shipping cost ends up being	WORSE Seller fixes shipping price, but supervised by eBay (to avoid overcharging)
Client Follow Up / Marketing Info	WORSE Sellers are not allowed use the contact information for follow up marketing actions. This is a big setback for any seller because in each transaction, the seller is selling an item, but the customer is acquired by Amazon, not by the seller.	MUCH BETTER Billing information is managed by the seller itself. The seller can decide what to do in terms of follow up marketing actions. The long term relationship will be between the seller and the client, not between the platform and the client.

Conclusions and final thoughts

• Although in general Amazon seems to have better quality of service and a more options for sellers, It’s more expensive and doesn’t allow follow up marketing actions; two things that are not trivial for sellers. In other words, It might be better… but at a cost.
• The other very important point is that the clients of both platforms tend to be loyal to their marketplace, which means that if you’re a seller on eBay and decide to start selling on Amazon, you’ll reach millions of NEW customers. Sell on both platforms, you have nothing to lose, only millions of new customers to reach.
• As a final conclusion, I could argue that both platforms should be used only to generate incremental sales, and not become the only source of income. To be so dependent on only one sales channel, has always proved to too risky….

Related content: eBay vs. Amazon, the Buyer's perspective

Copyright MBA Internet Marketing Manager

Online retailing Amazon vs eBay. Selling on Amazon or selling on eBay? Which is the best option for online vendors (Part 1)

With Amazon increasing more 30% every year on 3^rd party sales and recent news of layoffs in eBay, the question of selling on eBay or selling on Amazon is more important to online sellers now than ever. The economic slowdown and financial crisis has also made e-commerce vendors take a much closer look on listing fees, commissions, tools, etc in order take a more informed decision about which 3^rd party platform they choose. This article will try to give some information to online stores about the advantages and disadvantages of selling on Amazon.com and ebay.com.

Let’s start the analisys with the current state of both platforms in terms of sales by 3^rd party goods. This could be one indicator (certainly not the only one) of the platform’s success. The first impression is that eBay is the overwhelming leader in marketplace solutions for 3^rd party ecommerce companies. In an analysis done by Piper Jaffray of Gene Munster, it’s estimated that in the last 12 months eBay sold 3^rd party goods by a market value of roughly $62 billion, while Amazon sold just $6 billion. Although the difference might seem huge in favor of eBay, taking a closer look can prove otherwise. eBay sales have grown less than the industry average, increases in listing fees have outraged groups of important power sellers and as a result of this, the stock has underperformed S&P 500 and Nasdaq Index in the last year. On the other hand, Amazon’s third party sales have been growing steadily at the same pace as total revenues (30-35% a year). Amazon has outpaced Industry growth by a huge margin. Another important reason for the difference in the amount of US$ worth of goods sold is just one of geographical reach. While eBay is present in 32 countries, Amazon has presence in only 7 so any volume comparison would have to be adjusted accordingly. With a clearer picture of the figures now, the trend is very clear: eBay sales are stagnating while more and more vendors are opting for Amazon as their marketplace platform.

The immediate following question would be Why? Why more and more vendors are choosing Amazon instead of eBay to sell if fees are more expensive? Some of the reasons why, that I’ve found are the following.

· Fee structure and pricing formats: While, on average, Amazon’s fees are higher, averages always hide important information. Amazon’s fee structure is easier to understand. There is one monthly payment for almost unliimited listings and a commission based on a Fixed price (not variable like in eBay). This makes Amazon’s marketplace more appealing to vendors with high volume / high rotation goods, meaning goods with not much differentiation and more like a “commodity” type. On the other hand, eBay’s auction format and fee structure is much more appealing to high price / low rotation items. No wonder why eBay started as a platform almost only for “Antiques and Collectors” and has moved gradually to mainstream vendors.

· Better customers: Amazon customers have proved to be more loyal, spend more, and most importantly, pay on average higher prices for the same items than on eBay. These are very appealing reason for an Online Vendor to choose Amazon’s Platform; let’s check them one by one.

o More loyal customers: Even when Amazon sells goods from a third party seller, It retains customer information and the right to follow up on that client with any marketing action Amazon considers appropriate. This means that all direct marketing actions are centralized and controlled by Amazon and this is a huge advantage to make customers more loyal. On the other hand eBay does not control this information. If a seller sells something on eBay, the seller retains billing and contact information, not eBay. Therefore, follow up marketing actions are spread between many vendors, with no coordination or consistency to the eyes of the buyer.

o Customers that spend more: What Amazon does with the purchaser information is pure and “state of the art” direct marketing to increase revenue and profitability per customer. By sending relevant e-mails, cross selling items before checkout, whish lists, giving away shipping fees, personalization tools, etc, Amazon has achieved loyal customers, and in this case, loyal customers spend more than in any other site.

o Higher average prices: There are a couple of reasons that I can say why prices on Amazon are higher than on eBay. First and most important is the marketplace structure: Amazon is a fixed price marketplace while eBay is an auction based marketplace. By its nature, an auction based marketplace will be much more competitive on prices. For similar items, a difference of $1 might make a buyer decide to go for the cheapest option. Also, it’s much easier to compare prices between different vendors because the website was originally designed to do this.

The other reason, easier to understand is just that fees on Amazon are higher, therefore on average, as sellers tend to maintain their prices, prices for similar items will be higher on Amazon than on eBay. In any case, is important for an online vendor to know that Amazon’s customers will be less picky on prices than eBay’s customers.

For these three reasons we can say that Amazon’s customers are better customers: they are more loyal customers, spend more money on each purchase, buy more often and pay higher average prices. This are very important reasons for sellers to use the platform, even at the cost of paying higher fees.

Related content: eBay vs. Amazon, the Buyer's perspective

The rest of the article, conclusions and a summary of pros and cons will continue in Part 2

Copyright MBA Internet Marketing Manager