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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

Rory Fitzgerald Pralow

American Military University

Basics of Business 100, Week 5

Prof. Jodi Bouvin

September 5, 2010
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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

Amazon.com, LLC is an American based company that supports multi-national cultures.

Amazon leads the online retailer’s as of 2010 bringing in the largest revenue out of all online

retailers. Amazon was founded in 1994 by Jeffery P. Bezos; headquarters is located in Seattle

Washington. Amazon though, has major warehouses across the world for faster shipping and

better customer satisfaction. Amazon has the largest market cap out of all major online

retailers, i.e. Wal-Mart, Overstock, Target, Staples, so on and so forth. Amazon brings a better

outcome and success for its members, so that they may be loyal to the company and its

business point of view. Amazon.com is a Third-party market place for people to buy and sell

their products across the web for reasonable prices. Amazon offers incentives and great

services so that you as the customer can expand through the market make a business for

yourself. By selling merchandise of your own or even posting merchandise from your home

base onto Amazon for better deals and customer easy-buying. Amazon sets itself up for success

by being a Third-party marketplace because of the great deals that you could come across, but

for the future to come, Amazon will overtake the market completely be a merchandise

reproducer for many company that either don’t sell a specific item inside their home-base site

or just want to expand out more by posting ads and offering better deal through a marketplace

such as Amazon. Being a Third-party marketplace, you have your ups and downs about

shipping/handling and even merchandise. You get what you pay for, however, through my

personal experiences with Amazon; this organization sets the bar for online help, reviews,

customer service, products and everything that they have to offer. Amazon.com take on e-

commerce business was the smartest of all. Being flexible and offering better deals than regular

companies is how Amazon maintains its glory in the market and will still reign supreme for a
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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

long time to come. Amazon use of the business tool has gotten this organization a lot of

attention. Being a world-wide based company like almost all of the online market is. Amazon

leads the way in most categories of this particular branch. It is simply buy and sell type of deal.

There is no auction or anything of that nature. Amazon keeps it plain and simple with its buyers

and sellers. Also having secure buying makes the customer feel safe about purchasing items

across the web and not having their information hacked or stolen. Amazon.com does a great

job by controlling this issue at hand so hiccups like these don’t occur as often as mot online

marketplaces have.

EBay Inc. is also an American based company offering many similar things, yet at a

different perspective than Amazon.com. EBay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; location

of this company is San Jose, California. EBay is online auction site and offers online shopping for

its customers, but eBay caters more to the auction side of the house. Being world-wide eBay’s

user base is very large. Keeping everything quite simple with the buy and sell, giving it more of

an edge of excitement by biding to see who can get his particular type of merchandise for an

unbelievable low price. EBay gives its customer a reason to go look for more things to bid on to

see what kind price that they could get for it, it almost becomes addictive. EBay however, has

chosen a great E-Commerce model, E-auctions, leading the world in the auction side of the

internet. Major businesses use eBay to buy and sell products and merchandise over the web.

Just like some of its other competitors, EBay.com offers incentives and great deals for its

customers. EBay offers secure buying using PayPal as there proprietary transaction service

because of its great security. However, eBay is competing on a larger level than most

companies being in the auction side of the house. EBay is not the only online auctioning site
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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

there is as far as the world is concerned. EBay has stood their ground as the official online

bidding company of America, but where or how do they compare to the world wide auction?

Based on my personal experiences with eBay, this would not be company of choose to business

with if you are a corporate company. Unless there is an eBay business auction side of the

house, I would not choose this company for business. Using eBay, I have gotten faulty product

from them and even with their buying security as they say. I have been bamboozled by eBay

before; one time is enough for me. Everyone has their reasons on whom to do business with

and not to. However, eBay is not bad enough to not do business with; just being cautious is

what is important in the auction world, especially on the web.

Amazon.com, LLC and EBay, Inc. are leaders in the E-commerce world, the models that

they use however, are different. Amazon.com uses a Third-party marketplace model for their

business type. During the creation of Amazon.com, the owner created his own, a much newer

model to build his company off of. By bringing in people who shared the same work ethic as

him, who were passionate about everything and wanted to work, was the plan for this

company. However, the owner had to come up with another more strategic plan, knowing that

Amazon plummeted its first quarter because no one knew of it. So bringing in a stock broker,

and creating more partnerships with major corporations such as; Target and Babies R us.

Amazon expanded further through the internet market as a major marketplace, taking majority

space of the web, Amazon turned itself into a tycoon with their slogan, “Get Big Fast” ( Saunders,

2001, pp.122-123). EBay, Inc. uses the E-auction side of the house to perform over the world as

the leader in auction/bidding web shopping. What gives Amazon its edge, is its Third-party

seller model. Not only this, but there secure buying and selling is what gives them an edge to
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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

me, over most companies like EBay, Inc., which uses PayPal buying services. PayPal is notorious

for having scam and fraud issues with people losing money to scam artist and PayPal not being

able to recover any of your money, is what gives eBay a minor downfall for most. As far as the

objectives and goals, both companies set the standard for themselves in there sector of the E-

commerce world. Majority of businesses in America use eBay and Amazon for transactions,

trading, and buying across the web. In this case, they have set themselves up for success in the

partnerships these 2 companies have acquired. Depending on your business and what you want

in a service to buy and trade, you have to choose what works for your company. Based on

personal issues and uses of the companies, Amazon.com gets my vote for business use in the

corporate world. Amazon delivers a solid interface, buy/sell strategy and security. Amazon sets

the bar for people to want to become partners with this organization.
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E-commerce: Amazon.com & Ebay.com

References

Amazon.com. (2010, September 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:06,

September 4, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Amazon.com&oldid=382870233

EBay. (2010, September 4). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:07, September 4,

2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=EBay&oldid=382823724

Electronic business. (2010, August 29). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:07,

September 4, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Electronic_business&oldid=381736777

Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & More. Web.

04 Sept. 2010. <http://www.amazon.com/>.

EBay - New & Used Electronics, Cars, Apparel, Collectibles, Sporting Goods & More at Low

Prices. Web. 04 Sept. 2010. <http://www.ebay.com/>.

"E-Commerce - Amazon.com - M/Cyclopedia of New Media." Main Page - M/Cyclopedia of New

Media. Web. 05 Sept. 2010. <http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Companies_-

_Amazon>.