Big chains hop on the eBay Now bandwagon
The list of retailers offering same-day delivery through eBay Now is growing and the list includes some of the biggest names from across the industry, including: AutoZone, Barnes & Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Bloomingdale’s, Crate & Barrel, FootLocker, GameStop, GNC, Golfsmith, Guitar Center, Home Depot, Kmart, Macy’s, Microsoft, Pier One Imports, Staples, Sunglass Hut, Walgreens and Urban Outfitters.
The service, which is currently offered in the Chicago, Dallas, New York and the San Francisco Bay areas, will be expanded to 25 additional cities this year, including some in international markets.
This past holiday season, eBay offered the service for free in a bid to attract more shoppers to its Marketplaces. The everyday price for delivery is $5 with a minimum order of $25. Items are typically delivered within two hours of being ordered. In the case of returns, customers send an e-mail to eBay, which dispatches one of its "shopping valets" to pick up the item.
A recent piece on EcommerceBytes.com pointed out that while eBay Now promotes deliveries from local brick and mortar stores, those listed on the site are units of large chains. Company executives have indicated a desire to add local shops to the service in the past.
Discussion Questions
Do you perceive same-day delivery service to be a big need of consumers at present? Will eBay and others be successful in creating a market for same-day deliveries regardless of what consumers feel they need? Would the addition of smaller chains and independent shops be to the benefit or detriment of eBay Now?
Shoppers don’t like to wait. eBay’s same-day delivery knocks that negative out of consumers’ minds. The more retailers eBay can add to same day delivery, the better. It benefits the retailers and eBay. If successful, this eBay may emerge as a challenger to Amazon’s domination of online shopping.
What we are seeing is eBay establishing a need for their customers within acceptable market pricing parameters that they researched, defined and made available to the public. What is interesting is how they jumped ahead of the competition using the fundamentals of a quick reaction delivery service. This ability should be a lesson to the executives in companies like UPS and FedEx, as well as the United States Postal Services, that the market has evolved right under their noses without detection and not simply gone away.
This is the sort of thing that can happen when you are to busy streamlining and downsizing instead of developing the business and keeping your eye on the market. It is precisely missed opportunities like this made by very large corporations that created companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Google.
The more the merrier. This is a great consumer service. Who knows how profitable it will be for the large and small merchants, however, customers certainly love it. Gotta look at supply chain and fulfillment costs. Get those margins up!