Articles

Apr 17, 2020

Sellers Are Not Diversifying As Amazon Struggles

Competing marketplaces are not seeing a significant acceleration in new sellers as Amazon's fulfillment struggles caused sellers to reevaluate their dependence on the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) service. One month after Amazon started prioritizing the stocking of essentials and high-demand items in its warehouses, making many sellers that used the FBA service to look for other warehousing providers, it didn't drive sellers to look for alternative marketplaces.

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Feb 11, 2020

eBay's Missing Fast Shipping Flywheel

Years after announcing fast shipping options on eBay, less than 1% of the over 800 million listings for sale on the platform offer three-day shipping. The reason so few items on eBay offer fast shipping is because there is no incentive for sellers. On eBay, offering fast shipping doesn't increase sales.

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Jan 29, 2020

Sales on eBay in the US Down 9%

Sales on eBay in the US declined 9% in the fourth quarter, and the number of sold items globally shrunk 4%. In the US, eBay’s market share of online shopping is second only to Amazon, but while the rest of the market is growing, eBay is shrinking.

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Dec 16, 2019

Marketplaces Year in Review 2019

The Year in Review looks at the state of marketplaces and makes predictions on what’s to come next. The report analyzes Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Jet, Target, Wish, and Google marketplaces through more than forty charts based on Marketplace Pulse data. It is our biggest and most comprehensive research report yet.

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Nov 12, 2019

eBay Is Stuffing Its Search Results Pages With Ads

eBay search results now start with five sponsored product ads. The company has recently adjusted the mix of promoted and non-promoted listings at the top of search results, which previously rarely had ads. The default search page format has 48 listings plus an additional 13 sponsored listings.

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Oct 24, 2019

eBay Growth Turns Negative

eBay GMV was down by $1 billion, and the sold items growth has turned negative for the first time in the company’s history. The company reported $20.4 billion in GMV in Q3, down -5% year-over-year from $21.4 billion. Sold items growth was -3%; it hasn’t grown since 2018 Q1.

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Sep 5, 2019

Ten Years of Walmart Marketplace

On August 31, 2009, Walmart announced the Walmart marketplace, expanding existing assortment by offering additional products from a select group of retailers. At the time it added nearly one million new items to the catalog from just a few sellers. Ten years later, the marketplace has grown to over 28,000 sellers, which all together bring 45 million items to the Walmart online catalog.

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Aug 2, 2019

Google Shopping Takes One Small Step

The new Google Shopping homepage, now hosting 2,000 stores, attempts to unify the company's shopping efforts into one. Google has merged the marketplace-turned Google Express into Google Shopping, a service which used to focus on price comparison.

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Jul 31, 2019

Fulfillment by eBay

eBay introduced Managed Delivery, a fulfillment service not unlike Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), enabling sellers to store, pack and ship their products through logistics partners managed by eBay. Replicating what drove sellers to use FBA is the hardest challenge eBay will have to solve.

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Jul 17, 2019

Amazon Prime Day Focuses on “Exclusive”

On Prime Day 2019, the biggest winners were known brands and Amazon devices, as Amazon-owned private label brands took a back seat, according to Marketplace Pulse research. Over a million products were available with a Prime Day deal, but as competing retailers like Walmart and Target launched their shopping events, Amazon shifted focus to exclusive products and new product launches.

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