The difference between ebay\x0d\ and Amazon \x0d\ Open platform for e-commerce: the future of Amazon \x0d\ Amazon is the most successful e-commerce enterprise in the world. In terms of platform opening, Amazon began to lay out the platform as early as 1999, officially launched the Marketplace service on 200 1, and extended the service to 2002. In 2003, Canada and France were added. Up to now, nearly 50% of the transaction volume of its main station in the United States comes from market place, and Marketplace has also changed from the initial defensive purpose to the current strategic core. The development process of Amazon market is divided into three stages: Yi Bei stage of national defense, FBA stage and KDP stage. Defending Yi Bei (1999-2006): In order to compete with Yi Bei, Amazon launched Amazon \ x0d \ Auctions in March of 1999. In September of the same year, Amazon released the zShop service, which expanded the personal auction business to small and medium-sized businesses and allowed them to open stores on Zhops \ x0d \ to display and sell their products. In June 2000, 165438+ 10, Amazon launched Marketplace, a third-party open platform, on the basis of integrating auction and zShops business. In the first stage, Amazon opened in a hurry, the important purpose of which was to develop Yi Bei's defense more quickly. However, Amazon Marketplace lacks the support of supporting facilities, with a small number of users and insufficient business management experience. In the following years, Amazon Mall did not develop. As for the propaganda that "Amazon Mall 200 1 fourth quarter orders have accounted for 15% of Amazon's total orders", there is quite a lot of water in it. FBA stage (2006-2065438+00): In 2006, Amazon's market value began to surpass Yi Bei, and its insistence on high quality and heavy mode began to gain advantages over Yi Bei; In terms of platform opening, Amazon launched two key services in September 2006: WebStore\x0d\byAmazon and FBA(FulfillmentbyAmazon). The first service allows merchants to use Amazon's technology to create their own independent e-commerce websites in the form of POWEREDBY\x0d\Amazon and WEBSTOREBY\x0d\Amazon. Amazon's software and hardware resources are provided to third parties for paid use, including third-party e-commerce websites, which provides technical support for the development of open platforms. The second measure plays a greater role in the development of open platform, and directly solves the warehousing and logistics problems for sellers. With this service, Amazon has put its open platform business into a rapid development track. KDP stage (20 10- present): 20 10, 1, Amazon launched DTP (Kindle \ x0d \ direct publishing), so that authors or publishers can sell books directly on Amazon platform; In June of the same year165438+1October, Amazon launched Amazon\x0d\Studios to attract producers and screenwriters to sell their works through its platform, which marked that Amazon's open platform entered a new development stage, expanding from physical goods to digital products. At the same time, Amazon's FBA service has been developed and improved for several years, and more and more businesses have begun to use this service. By the end of 20 12, there were about 2 million active merchants in Amazon; At present, Amazon's trading volume from open platforms accounts for nearly 50% of its main station in the United States. The transaction volume of Amazon market is about half that of Yi Bei, but the quality of its merchants is significantly higher, and it is expected to surpass Yi Bei in the next few years. Amazon market is B2B2C mode, which is different from C2C mode in Yi Bei. Except for the earliest auction, Amazon Marketplace has always been sold at a fixed price. For Amazon, its initial launch of Marketplace was somewhat for defensive reasons, but in the process of development, Marketplace not only can give consumers more and wider choices, but also gradually becomes the most important direction for Amazon to improve its gross profit and profitability because of its light model. On the whole, Amazon Marketplace adopts a "lenient approach", and both individuals and enterprises can open stores on its platform. Business merchants need to pay a fixed service fee of $39.99 per month. After that, the commission and other expenses are the same as those of individual sellers. The difference is that enterprises can sell more products in more categories. For an individual seller who sells less than 40 items a month, there is no need to pay a fixed service fee every month. He can keep the product online by paying a "shelf fee" of 0.99 US dollars for each item until it is sold. It should be said that the entry threshold of Amazon Marketplace is very low, more than 20 categories are completely open to the public, and there is no qualification requirement for sellers; Other categories need to meet certain conditions before applying to Amazon, but the overall requirements are not high; Moreover, Amazon also allows sellers to sell old or repaired products. Amazon's market entry threshold is low, but it is not lax in seller management. Both individual sellers and corporate sellers must abide by Amazon's comprehensive safeguard clause (A-to-Z \ x0d \ guarantee \ x0d \ program), and the rights and interests of buyers will be fully supported by Amazon. The market ensures that the quality is consistent with self-management. As an open platform, self-operated B2C has a big problem that it can't guarantee the same quality as self-operated, thus reducing consumers' goodwill towards the whole platform. Since its establishment, Amazon has attached great importance to users' reputation and is unwilling to sacrifice quality in order to increase transaction volume. To this end, Amazon requires sellers to provide A-Z guarantee services, and strive to make the open platform achieve the quality and brand image of self-operated business. Unlike Yi Bei and domestic e-commerce open platforms which are store-centric, Amazon's open platform adopts a product-centric structure. Amazon does not open a special second-level domain name for sellers. The home pages of most stores are commodity list pages, which downplays the stores and ensures the unified brand image of Amazon platform. In addition, Amazon Marketplace tries to be personalized when displaying product information, especially some standardized products. Each seller uses a unified detailed introduction page, and the information on this page generally follows the introduction of products by brand manufacturers; Having a unified product details page can save a lot of work for sellers, reduce the situation that sellers promote transactions through false introductions, and guide sellers to concentrate their time and energy on internal work such as price, distribution and after-sales. The development advantages of Amazon Marketplace Puge mentioned in the last article that the key factors that determine whether the open platform can be built include website traffic, warehousing and logistics, payment methods, technical strength and ecological construction. Amazon has obvious advantages in all aspects. In terms of traffic, as early as 1996, Amazon launched the website alliance (Amazon\x0d\Associates), which allowed other websites to share the traffic imported by Amazon, and its alliance almost included the mainstream Internet websites. Amazon can accumulate users through quality services and gradually form a positive cycle; At present, Amazon's website traffic is the sixth in the world, and the quality of users is quite good, which is very attractive to third-party sellers. In terms of warehousing and logistics, Amazon's advantages are more obvious. Prime service launched in 2005 can be delivered within two days. With storage centers all over the United States, Amazon can now deliver goods within 1 day. Its FBA service, which is open to sellers, can not only reduce costs for sellers, but also ensure the consistency of Amazon's quality, which is attractive to both sellers and buyers. In terms of payment means and technical strength, Amazon has its own payment service Amazon \ x0d \ payment technology, which has obvious advantages. Its recommendation system algorithm is unparalleled in the field of e-commerce. AWS cloud computing service makes it one of the most important participants in the field of cloud technology, and its advanced storage system technology has always been the object of learning by major e-commerce. In addition, Amazon attaches importance to cash flow and has strong financial strength. The settlement with the seller can be completed in 14-2 1 day, and the account period is short, which is welcomed by the seller. The Challenge of Amazon Market Compared with Yi Bei, Amazon is slightly behind in payment and mobile development. Yi Bei's Paypal is a common third-party payment tool, especially in cross-border e-commerce. Amazon's Globe \ x0d \ sales business has never really developed, and the lack of a good payment method is one of the important reasons. On the mobile side, at present, Amazon mainly uses Kindle series products to sell digital products, and the sales of physical goods on the mobile side account for a low proportion; When users' shopping behavior shifted from PC to mobile, Yi Bei used the performance of mobile to push up the stock price, while Amazon was slightly dim in this respect. Amazon has largely solved the problem of communication between left and right hands, but it has not completely handled the relationship with third-party sellers. Amazon Marketplace has too few places for sellers to manipulate, and finally there is price competition among sellers; In addition, Amazon will expand the category of proprietary business according to the data of open platform, which will lead to competition between proprietary business and third-party sellers. Amazon is both a player and a referee, which will inevitably cause some sellers' dissatisfaction. EBay has no self-operated business, and its competition with offline retailers is relatively small; At the time of Amazon's rapid growth, many offline traditional retailers were dissatisfied with Amazon, and Yi Bei took the opportunity to penetrate offline. A typical example is Milo, a local shopping search company owned by Yi Bei, which imports data from offline retailers to help them sell online. Once the order is placed, Yi Bei sends someone to pick up the goods offline, and provides the same-day delivery service through "Yi Bei \x0d\Now", forming an interest alliance with offline merchants, threatening Amazon to some extent. (End)