Thursday, November 12, 2009
Ebay Losing 'Ground to Amazon
According to the article "Amid the Gloom, an E-Commerce War " by New York Times writer Brad Stone, Ebay is now facing serious competition from a company they thought they weren't in the same economic path as, Amazon. The reason Ebay thought they were similar but different from Amazon is due to the fact that Ebay has auctions, while Amazon just does fixed prices of items sold from different vendor. However, with the economy in an a downturn and people not wanting to look for a deal that has a reasonable possibility of going wrong through auction anymore, people are not investing as much money in Ebay. Just this past January, according to the article, Ebay laid off about 10 percent of its workers. Also, Ebay is barely beating Amazon in terms of overall usage(84 million active users to 81 million active users) , as opposed to when it had a size-able 30 percent advantage on Amazon several years ago. I think Ebay's' demise has a lot to do with what has been going on the past couple of years with vendors and costumers stealing money done through these auctions. In these times when money is not as abundant as it used to be, people are scared to take that risk dealing with auctions and would rather pay the little extra to know that they are getting their items safe and secure, thus the rise of Amazon.
