Amazon And eBay Pave The Way For Seamless Shopping
By Hannah Ash, contributing writer
Customer-centric Retailing Pays Off
Newly released data from Channel Advisor shows that for two of online retail’s top dogs, Amazon and eBay, omni-channel initiatives are paying off. Analysts for the firm Jefferies are predicting that both stocks will continue to climb, and they foresee as much as a 40 percent gain for Amazon while eBay is already enjoying a 22 percent gain over March of 2013. Both Amazon and eBay have been aggressively pursuing a customer-centric, integrated retail experience since their inceptions; this strategy appears to be reflected in their current stock price ranges.
Amazon and eBay’s most successful initiatives have evolved organically as a response to real customer need. PayPal is credited as a large reason for eBay’s success; it’s important to note that the online and mobile payment platforms were created as a response to a need of making the eBay experience more fluid for its customers. In a letter to eBay’s shareholders, dated March 25th, 2014, eBay credits its early adoption of mobile payment systems for some of its large successes, “In 2009, we launched an aggressive push into the nascent mobile commerce space. eBay mobile was an early leader, and the eBay mobile app has been downloaded more than 186 million times since launch. Today, our company is a clear leader, with eBay reaching $22 billion and PayPal hitting $27 billion in mobile commerce volume in 2013.”
Amazon, meanwhile, has managed to do what many retailers, both bricks and clicks, have only dreamed of — it has captured a significant portion of the retailer’s online sales. A recent report, using Kantar Retail Data, shows that only 19 percent of Walmart’s in-store shoppers shop the Walmart website, while 53 of Walmart’s in-store shoppers shop the Amazon website. One key reason for this difference is Amazon’s shipping initiatives. Amazon recognized that to encourage online shopping, shipping needed to be as fluid and seamless as possible. Currently, Amazon offers (in select markets) same-day deliver, next-day delivery, and several different rush options — Walmart’s rush delivery can take as much as 5 days.
Walmart is taking strides toward optimizing its shipping with other major retailers working hard to come up with great mobile payment systems. One truth rings clear — when companies think like a consumer, find problems, and create solutions, success often follows. It is a model that other retailers are taking to heart, as head of Nordstrom Innovation Labs JB Brown, comments, “We usually start out with a customer problem and see if we can solve it. That’s the genesis of where we start. We meet with a customer, do shop-alongs, go to their homes, have them tell us how they make choices and get grounded in their lives.”