May 30
Amazon vs. eBay — Apples to Apples Comparison!
For your weekend reading pleasure:It is difficult to do an Apples-to-Apples comparison of eBay and Amazon, because they are so different, eBay is in 39 countries, has auctions, sells cars and tickets, has a payments business (PayPal) a communications business (Skype) and a classifieds business (Kijiji, et al) while Amazon really is a retailer with a small (30% of units sold) but growing 3P merchant business.
They are also different because they use different terminology. Amazon uses “Revenue” because they actually own the inventory and sell things and they include GMV from 3P merchants in their revenue because they handle the entire payment transaction. eBay uses GMV to discuss the amount of product sold in their marketplace business; eBay’s “Revenue” is really the money they get from fees and other business segments. While these two metrics are different, they are similar enough for my comparison. For this purpose I will call […]