eBay does not want to be a lesser version of Amazon
Remember eBay? It's no longer just the auction site or a destination for other people's used stuff. It's a commerce destination with more than 100 million users that, according to eBay CEO Devin Wenig, moves $90B of products per year.
It's also not necessarily the Amazon competitor people make it out to be.
"Used goods is a small and declining minority of what we do," said Wenig, who was speaking at the annual Code Conference on Thursday.
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The eBay CEO sought repeatedly to paint a clear distinction between his company and the world's largest online retailer. Wenig noted that eBay is not the place you go to get a printer cartridge delivered in a day. Instead, you might shop eBay to get that iPhone 6s for your daughter while you buy a brand new iPhone 7 elsewhere.
"I don’t have to be like Amazon, I don't need to be like anyone else. The world doesn’t need an almost-as good Amazon, it needs a better eBay," he said.
Wenig is focused on growing the next 100M eBay users and structuring the services' 1 billion products.
The company has already made significant progress in managing the service's products and fulfillment system.
"eBay used to be a very unmanaged market place. Now it's a highly intermediated marketplace," said Wenig, adding that during the last holiday season eBay delivered two-thirds of ordered products within three days. He then took another dig at Amazon.
"I’d rather have a billion unique items that arrive in 3 days than a billion commodity items that arrive in one day," he said.
AI Commerce
The company is also looking at introducing artificial intelligence to the mix. Wenig said the confluence of big data and more sophisticated algorithms is opening up new opportunities in bringing together ecommerce and artificial intelligence.
"What you may see a year from now is eBay living off of eBay," Wenig said. In other words, future eBay may, in part, be a series of bots that live outside of the traditional eBay ecosystem and on other services.
It might, Wenig said, reside in Facebook Messenger. eBay could even offer some sort of conversational ecommerce option.
Ultimately, Wenig wants eBay to be a commerce fabric that connect buyers with inventory
"I want to see eBay be ubiquitous where people spend their time," Wenig said.
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Topics Amazon
Lance Ulanoff was Chief Correspondent and Editor-at-Large of Mashable. Lance acted as a senior member of the editing team, with a focus on defining internal and curated opinion content. He also helped develop staff-wide alternative story-telling skills and implementation of social media tools during live events. Prior to joining Mashable in September 2011 Lance Ulanoff served as Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for the Ziff Davis, Inc. While there, he guided the brand to a 100% digital existence and oversaw content strategy for all of Ziff Davis’ Web sites. His long-running column on PCMag.com earned him a Bronze award from the ASBPE. Winmag.com, HomePC.com and PCMag.com were all been honored under Lance’s guidance.He makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Fox News, the Today Show, Good Morning America, Kelly and Michael, CNBC, CNN and the BBC.He has also offered commentary on National Public Radio and been interviewed by newspapers and radio stations around the country. Lance has been an invited guest speaker at numerous technology conferences including SXSW, Think Mobile, CEA Line Shows, Digital Life, RoboBusiness, RoboNexus, Business Foresight and Digital Media Wire’s Games and Mobile Forum.
