Amazon business is usually compared with eBay, Walmart or AliExpress. On any of these sites, of course, you can do business as well and earn money, but why did we choose Amazon? Let’s figure it out.
Amazon business or eBay and Walmart?
First, let’s compare Amazon to its closest competitors in the US market, eBay and Walmart.
eBay business or Amazon business?
Let’s start with eBay. eBay is the same trading platform as Amazon, but you can organize auctions on eBay, but this is not particularly important if you sell goods in bulk, then we are interested in standard sales, like through Amazon. Ebay has three main disadvantages.
- The website is much simpler than Amazon.
This may seem like a plus to you at first glance, but because of this, there is high competition among sellers. After all, many are interested in “where it is simpler”.
- The delivery.
eBay has no FBA services, thus things are much worse with delivery there. Some even offer to ship from Russia to the USA by the piece, but who will wait for the goods for several weeks if you can buy on Amazon and any goods will be there tomorrow? Well, and accordingly, you should organize all the logistics, and you should also control the fulfillment of orders. On Amazon, it’s automated.
- The size of the market.
Due to the lack of a convenient delivery service and due to the ease of sales and the large number of sellers (Amazon also has competition and many sellers, but the number of customers there is much higher) the actual number of customers there is much less. Therefore, eBay is clearly losing the competition to Amazon.
Now let’s take a look at Walmart.
As far as we know, Walmart does not allow everyone to trade, it only works with existing sellers on other sites or with existing online stores. Accordingly, this already complicates the entry to Walmart.
You also process orders on Walmart yourself, which also complicates your work and adds routine, and the market size is still far from the Amazon market, although the competition is less than on eBay.
At the same time, Walmart aims to compete with Amazon and invest in development. Perhaps in a few years, Walmart sales will somehow come close to Amazon, but so far Walmart is clearly losing.
The difference between Walmart and Amazon
- Shop character
Walmart started out as brick-and-mortar stores and has added an online store in recent years; Amazon is a giant e-commerce store with a limited number of physical points of sale.
- Number of products
Walmart offers consumers more than 4 million in-store items across a wide range of product categories. Amazon offers consumers more than 250 million products available online and adds more than 50,000 items a day.
- Membership fee
Walmart does not charge membership fees for online purchases; An Amazon Prime membership costs $12.99 per month or a one-time annual fee of $99.
- Delivery
Walmart delivers groceries purchased online for free if the cart total is over $35; Amazon Prime members get free same-day, next-day, and two-day shipping.
- Places
Walmart has over 11,000 stores located in approximately 27 countries.
Amazon has limited physical stores in the United States, but citizens from over 180 countries can shop online.
- Prices
Walmart is cheaper in all product categories except Food & Drink. Amazon is significantly cheaper in the Food & Drink category, but more expensive in other categories.
- Income
Walmart had a net income of $14 billion in 2016; In 2016, Amazon posted a net income of $2.3 billion. However, e-commerce growth is much higher than in-store growth.
AliExpress
It would be fairer to say that Aliexpress is the largest market on Earth, where you can find almost any product, from a phone case to a car. AliExpess ships either directly from China or the United States or, extremely rarely, directly from the country you order from.
The main purpose of AliExpress is bulk purchases. Let’s compare the positive and negative sides of the platform.
Pros:
- Prices. Here you will see the lowest prices for all products.
- Range. You will not find any other resource with such a wide range of products.
- Free shipping. AliExpress offers free shipping to many countries, so you can save a lot on shipping costs.
- Buyer protection. If you were sent an order of poor quality or nothing at all, you could quickly return the money.
Cons:
- Time of delivery. The waiting time for parcel delivery varies from 2 weeks to 2 months.
- Lack of opportunity to view the product. You cannot judge the quality of a product until it is in your hands.
Let’s summarize
Amazon is the largest marketplace in the US, with over 50% of all online sales in the US going through the Amazon website. Amazon has the best customer service and automation. Yes, you need to understand Amazon, but there are much more prospects in it than on other marketplaces.
Yours, Amaz.Markets
0