Amazon Is Not the Biggest Threat eBay Faces
It's been a tough year for eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), as it tries to turn around its marketplace business. The year-over-year growth in gross merchandise volume (GMV) -- which includes the total value of all closed transactions in the marketplace -- decreased by 2% in the third quarter. This is while the global e-commerce market increased by around 20% over the last year, according to estimates from eMarketer.
Management continues to make changes to the customer experience and push out its marketing and payments service to make it easier and more cost-effective for sellers to do business on eBay's platform. But eBay has been struggling with slowing growth for years now. Investors have placed the blame on Amazon.com's (NASDAQ: AMZN) fulfillment program, which lets merchants utilize Amazon's warehouses and free shipping offers to sell used or new items to millions of Prime members.
However, there are other potential threats from smaller players that eBay needs to worry about. One of those is Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY), the fast-growing upstart led by a former eBay executive that's known for its offering of handmade and vintage items.
Source Fool.com
