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Elaine Briones

Professor William Nolan

ENGL 1301 123

6 October 2021

Competition within Commercial Websites

The modern world has evolved in so many ways throughout the decades whether it’s

diversity, better career options, and technology. Technology has made an impact with the world

by turning letters into emails, communication by texting, and stores creating websites to shop

online to make shopping much more sufficient and faster Many commercial websites differ with

one another by having different categories and display a variety of products for their consumers.

Such commercial websites include Shein, Wish, and Amazon. The form/content vary within the

three texts that will be discussed, but the way it is formed is there are tabs depending on what

you are shopping for, deals or promos being offered by the site for products, and a shopping cart

for the items being purchased. The content that is presented in these commercial websites are

the images for the products being sold, the reviews left on the product by customers who bought

it, and different varieties of the product like the colors or sizes. The community that is involved

with the websites all have the main goal to sell their items from their websites; the way they use

it is by have deals on their sites to tempt customers that they can get a free shipping if they buy

over orders with certain prices, have clearance deals, or have discounts/coupons for products

during certain occasions. The community rules are regulated rules for every commercial website

which are “Be helpful, respect others, and no sexual content, infringing content, and illegal

activity.” In order to keep the websites up and going, it must follow the regulations in order to

continue with its business. Three commercial websites that will be discussed is Shein, Wish and
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Amazon; the discussion will cover how these well-known companies have mutual competition

with one another and why one site is more successful than the other, as well as why products

produced by Shein and Wish are cheap and affordable.

The first text that will be discussed is the fashion website, Shein. Shein is a Chinese

company that was founded by founder Chris Xu in 2008 and is an online shopping website that

sells woman fast fashion, and delivers purchased items right to a customer’s door. Shein consists

of women clothing like tops, bottoms, dresses, lingerie, jewelry and even collabs with designers.

This company doesn’t have in person stores, but in 2020, they had made about $10 billion in

revenue; during this time, the pandemic broke out which made their sales go up higher since

everyone was in quarantined (https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22573682/shein-future-of-fast-

fashion-explained). Shein also made a generous amount of money because of how cheap their

clothing is, which tempts customers to bundle more because of good pricing. The way that Shein

grabs the attention of their customers is that on their website, they provide a big red box with

flashing yellow lettered text “SHEIN 70% OFF”, along with little text in the bottom “10% Off

on orders $29+, 15% Off on orders $69+, 20% Off on orders $169+, CODE: 13SHEINPS”.

Shein does that in order to catch the person’s eye and to give interest that anything they order,

they can get a percentage off on whatever item they buy, which convinces customers to make a

purchase.

The second text is the website Wish, Wish was founded by founder, Peter Szulczewski

and Danny Zhang in 2010. This website sells various items including clothing, jewelry, makeup,

shoes, phone products, home appliances and toys. The website grabs the customer’s attention by

distributing cheap prices that anyone would think “This is too good to be true”. Wish makes

about $1 billion for their annual revenue and although the products they sell is cheap, it doesn’t
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gain as much money as customers think it would. Wish is also known to sell products that are

unrelated with the products that are displayed on their website, which would leave customers

unsatisfied with their purchases and give their reviews on what they received. An example of an

unsatisfied customer was a man purchasing Adidas Yeezy’s that seemed to be the right item in

the picture that was provided but received a duplicate of “Yeezy’s” that was nothing compared to

how the picture looked. The Yeezy’s that the customer received looked like slippers to wear at

the house rather than looking like an actual going out shoe. When looking at Wish’s website, it

is shown that they do not provide a SKU number for their products (their unique identity) and the

reason they do not provide it is because the company believes their products will show up on

customers personalized browsing feed depending on what customer has more interest in rather

than having to search for items and get results. (https://merchantfaq.wish.com/hc/en-

us/articles/217299307-Why-do-my-products-not-show-up-in-search-). Another observation that

was made is that Wish only sells their products to those who have made a customer’s account

with the shopping website. The reason they only sell to those with an account is the same reason

as the SKU number, is that Wish isn’t a search-based website and is meant to show personalized

items depending on the customer’s liking, as well as what they’ve shopped for or the items that

are searched. So in order to be able to track down what the consumer likes, they need an account

so the data stays kept in the account.

The third text is one of the first online shopping website that was created

(https://blog.miva.com/the-history-of-ecommerce-how-did-it-all-begin), named Amazon.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos back in 1994 and began to grow fast with their business by

gaining 180,000 consumers with Amazon accounts in 1996, but soon managed to expand their

consumers to 1 million accounts in 1997. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Amazoncom) . The

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items that Amazon sells is a wide spectrum and can range from anything, from iPhones to Nike’s

clothing, and even unicorn poop in a can. They also include a Whole Foods Market and a

pharmacy in their website to shop for food and prescription drugs and the reason they added a

pharmacy to their website is to help their customers get the medication they need if they do or

don’t have insurance. (https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-

details/introducing-amazon-pharmacy-prescription-medications-delivered#:~:text=

%E2%80%9CWe%20designed%20Amazon%20Pharmacy%20to,%2C%20Vice%20President

%2C%20Amazon%20Pharmacy%20.) As for the Whole Foods, they included it into their

website as a way to attract customers to get Amazon Prime by giving discounts to the food they

purchase (https://slate.com/business/2021/06/why-amazon-bought-whole-foods-groceries-

online.html#:~:text=Online%20grocery%20shopping%20has%20been,for%20discounts%20on

%20their%20groceries.) Amazon gets all their inventory from US retailers as well as third-party

sellers; they buy products straight from manufacturers (https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-

scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-competing-products-11587650015). The

company also provides on their website “Amazon Prime” which is a premium that gives you

benefits such as fast and free shipping, free books and offers/deals that aren’t offered to those

without Amazon Prime.

There are a few things the three websites have in common when it comes to running their

website and how categorized their items are. One common thing that Shein and Wish have is that

they both are created by Chinese companies except for Amazon. The way they differ is that

Amazon sells almost about anything you can think of but compared to Shein, they only sell

fashion and accessories mainly for women. Meanwhile, Wish and Amazon cater their products to

just about anyone. Wish also varies with their products but aren’t as diverse as Amazon.
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Amazon includes their pharmacy and Whole Foods as mentioned earlier, but Wish doesn’t sell

food or medications. Another differ they have is that whenever the reviews are compared with

each other, they are all in different numbers. For example, a green silk dress is searched on all

the three websites, starting with Wish it only has 90 reviews and compared to Shein and

Amazon, Shein has 5712 reviews meanwhile Amazon has 922 reviews. The reason being why

Wish doesn’t have high reviews for their products is because they don’t have as much investors

as Shein and Amazon do. Amazon is a gigantic company that have many connections from

brands and investors, that they are able to provide a great variety to their consumers compared to

Wish. Another reason why Wish also doesn’t have as many reviews compared to Shein and

Amazon is because they only cater to customers that created an account with them; the reviews

that are left on the products being sold are left by customers who are associated with Wish.

Though the three commercial websites have different varieties with how they have their

categories organized on their website, what products they sell, etc. The biggest difference within

all these websites is the prices on their products. Shein and Wish have more affordable prices

with clothing compared to Amazon. Now why is that? Well, the reason for the two Chinese

companies to display cheap prices is because they reinforce labor work in their factories. While

these websites get most of their material from China, the labor work establishes fast-fashion to

which it produces trending clothing in a fast pace. So what does that have to do with cheaper

clothing? Whenever fast-fashion comes into play with labor work, labor workers are underpaid

and undergo through processing an incredible amount of low quality material, which then they

are able to make a good amount of clothing to sell for a cheaper price for the amount of material

that is being used. In the other hand, Amazon get their products manufactured in the United

States and don’t involve themselves in fast-fashion/labor work.

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Commercial websites all have one main goal in mind for their business and that is to

satisfy their consumers with the products they are marketing. Although they have differences

with how many people shop their website, how much they sell, who has more connections with

other investors or companies, they have made it easier to shop in a click of a few buttons without

the hassle of shopping in an in-person store where you may not find what you’re looking for. It

saves the trip and saves up time to shop online. It was concluded that the comparison within the

websites is that Shein and Wish use fast-fashion while Amazon does not due to the different

countries they gather their material from.

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Work Cited

Amazon Green Silk Dress: https://www.amazon.com/ZAFUL-Womens-Spaghetti-Straps-

Stain/dp/B0821DY1MP/ref=sr_1_25_sspa?

dchild=1&keywords=green+silk+dress&qid=1633579472&sr=8-25-

spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzQlc3SFc0RVBNNlZEJmVuY3J5

cHRlZElkPUEwNDkyMzEzM1ZQWEVXRUw4RzFGSiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNTk4

MDM3SzdYRTZPQ0pEVkIxJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfbXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN

0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Shein Green Silk Dress: https://us.shein.com/Solid-Drawstring-Side-Cami-Dress-p-2759697-cat-

1727.html?scici=Search~~EditSearch~~1~~green_20silk_20dress~~~~0

Wish Green Silk Dress: https://www.wish.com/product/womens-fashion-solid-color-sleeveless-

spaghetti-strap-cowl-neck-slip-casual-dress-5e478c27ce991a3ae8be7442?

hide_login_modal=true&share=mobileweb

Miva, “The History of Ecommerce: How did it all begin?” Miva, 26 October 26 2011

https://blog.miva.com/the-history-of-ecommerce-how-did-it-all-begin

Nguyen, Terry “Shein is the future of fast fashion. Is that a good thing?” Vox, 10 August 2021

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22573682/shein-future-of-fast-fashion-explained

Kozma. Leila, “Why is Online Retailer SHEIN So Suspiciously Cheap” Distractify,10 June 2020

https://www.distractify.com/p/shein-why-so-cheap

Hake, Mark R, “Wish Stock Is Cheap, But It’s Not a Bargain”, Investor Place, 18 June 2021

https://investorplace.com/2021/06/wish-stock-not-worth-more-than-12-86-or-16-percent-more-

without-fcf-or-ebitda-profits/
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“Why do my products not show up in search?”, Wish Merchants Help Center, 7 October 2021

https://merchantfaq.wish.com/hc/en-us/articles/217299307-Why-do-my-products-not-show-up-

in-search-

Mattioli, Dana, “Amazon Scooped Up Data From Its Own Sellers to Launch Competing

Products” The Wall Street Journal, 23 April 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-scooped-up-data-from-its-own-sellers-to-launch-

competing-products-11587650015

Introducing Amazon Pharmacy: Prescription Medications Delivered, Amazon, 17 November

2020

https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/introducing-amazon-

pharmacy-prescription-medications-delivered#:~:text=%E2%80%9CWe%20designed

%20Amazon%20Pharmacy%20to,%2C%20Vice%20President%2C%20Amazon%20Pharmacy

%20

Stevenson, Seth, “It’s Finally Clear Why Amazon Bought Whole Foods” Slate, 28 June 2021

https://slate.com/business/2021/06/why-amazon-bought-whole-foods-groceries-

online.html#:~:text=Online%20grocery%20shopping%20has%20been,for%20discounts%20on

%20their%20groceries