Anyone who shops or sells online will be familiar with both eBay and Amazon. Both these brand names have stood the test of time when it comes to e-commerce companies to have dominated the market. These two companies are household names when it comes to online shopping and provide shoppers with a unique opportunity to browse through hundreds of products, whether for sale or auction. At the same time, there are some significant points of distinction between these two brand names. As sellers or buyers, it makes sense to be informed about these differences.
eBay vs Amazon 2020:
eBay vs Amazon Buying:
The biggest difference between eBay and Amazon stores is that one is an auction website while the other is a retail website. eBay works like an online auction, facilitating sales between buyers and third-party sellers of both new and used products. But, people visiting Amazon for shopping will want to buy products directly from third-party vendors or the site itself.
Shopping Experience:
This is vastly different between eBay and Amazon; on eBay, prices of products are influenced by factors like the number of bids, the extent to which buyers are bidding on a specific product, etc. But on Amazon, prices are affected by factors like how unique a product is, competition, quality of the product, brand awareness, etc.
Safety:
You may be wondering which is safer; buying from Amazon or eBay. This point needs to be analyzed from the point of view of both professional vendors and buyers. It is important to avoid certain things when shopping on both these sites if you are selling here; for instance, you should avoid asking viewers to click on links that take them away from the website, exaggerate a product’s features, offer huge discounts, buy fake reviews, or write negative reviews. These tactics are counterproductive if you wish to increase your sales through either of these two platforms. Selling is found to be more productive and reliable on Amazon as compared to eBay. This is because Amazon offers the tools to become successful FBA sellers. Since Amazon has a really large community of sellers, you can always seek advice and help from it. eBay may have a similar community but this is not so active.
Market Share:
If you consider eBay vs Amazon market share you will need to see how many monthly visitors each gets. The truth is that the nature of traffic a website gets affects its sales directly. It will influence the total reach of the products you offer and their brand awareness. It is seen through studies that Amazon gets far more organic traffic compared to eBay, almost five times as much. So, you will probably get more people to view your products when you plan on selling these through Amazon.
Competitiveness:
Both eBay and Amazon are founded on the capitalist free market model and they will obviously be competitive. eBay, however, has the reputation of being a marketplace focusing on selling primarily collectibles and used products. It is more like a garage sale but eBay will never use other sellers for identifying trends and then snatch the market from them. Reports indicate that Amazon is by far the largest seller, consciously competing against and offering goods at lower rates than other third party vendors. Not only does Amazon sell its own goods, but it also sees which items are selling and which are not. This knowledge puts Amazon in a position of power, according to e-commerce data specialist James Dunford Wood. For the seller, he now has to compete for both, other sellers and Amazon.
For instance, if a vendor’s product starts to sell well, you can expect Amazon to start selling it within 6 month’s time, undercutting the original seller. Amazon uses smaller retailers to identify market trends and spot niche markets; then it pushes these sellers out and takes over those markets. So, one can safely conclude that Amazon is more competitive compared to eBay as far as sellers are concerned. Amazon has a preference for new products while eBay offers sellers with a chance to promote their brand awareness and although most of the items here may be brand new, it is known for being a market for people looking for collectibles and used items.
eBay vs Amazon Selling:
If you wish to start your own online business, you could be thinking which is a better place to start selling your products, is it eBay or Amazon. This decision will depend on a host of factors like the number of sellers, communities each of these marketplaces have, fees applicable in each, and tools that sellers can use. On eBay, you will need to create a professional seller account. You can then give your details and create a payment method. While some sellers are satisfied selling their stuff on eBay, others have not had favorable experiences. Whether you will succeed or not depends on whether the products you have listed are used or new, the kind of stuff you are selling, where you will ship these to, and most importantly, if the items are unique and limited. This is perhaps the biggest point of difference between eBay and Amazon sellers.
Amazon, on its part, offers third-party vendors the chance to showcase their products according to a commission-based system or FBA, i.e. fulfillment by Amazon. So, almost anyone is free to create a seller account on Amazon and begin selling here. According to reports, those selling on Amazon make more profits than the site itself. So, Amazon takes a pie of the share from these sales via seller fees. The good thing is that third-party sellers grow along with Amazon making Amazon a preferred choice for most. Amazon gets almost 100,000 new vendors each month and this has made the website more competitive. However, in the process, it has made it more challenging for budding entrepreneurs and start-ups to grow.
To sum up, eBay appears to be a far more accommodative market space. It is not as competitive as Amazon and sellers of less-popular brands can hope to hold their own on eBay. eBay allows you to create and grow a brand, and market this to prospective customers. Amazon is a tough taskmaster; it expects its sellers to satisfy the buyer’s needs; else, it can suspend the seller.
