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Tesco to take on ebay
I have heard on good authority that now Tesco has a foothold in most other things its turnings it attention to launching an online auction site to compete with Ebay, its probably one of the few companies that have the presence and finance to be able to offer a real threat to Ebay.
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32 Replies
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they don’t stand a chance, which is a damn shame as ebay really does need a kick up the rear. Tesco would have to spend billions to market an online auction site, they would need a massive volume of sellers with a massive amount of goods to even start with. Not to mention ebay is one of the most visited sites worldwide along with google. They would need to run the site for free to get people to use it and even then it would be a struggle.
But who knows, i’d love to see some competition for ebay but they do have a good hold of the sector, which others have failed to capture.
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actually i disagree with that, tesco can make a huge impact to ebay…
1: they got so many people logging in to their site to order food for home delivery, so there is no reason why they cant merge the two together.
Not sure i like that idea, but I suspect that is what they are thinking.2: They can compete on postage, although they cant take on royal mail but they can offer a very competitive way of sending parcels throughout the country and even home deliver them, they have the vans and trucks.
personally Tesco’s need to be slowed down in the expansion plans, the greed of this company is huge. Everything will be tesco related one day and then when im very old, Mr Tesco will be prime minister
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I’d like to see that happening, but as big as Tesco are it’s going to take some bit of doing to become any threat to Ebay. But competition is certainly what Ebay need!
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Tesco DO have an ebay outlet (since 27 Oct 2009) selling customer returns etc…so seems a bit odd to set up a whole new infrastructure to pander to peoples need to purchase used goods.
"A Tesco spokesman said: "We hope eBay users will like the chance to buy great value refurbished customer returns from Tesco, all sold with a 12 month Tesco warranty. It is a small trial offering a selection of products and we’ll see how it goes before deciding where to take it next.""
Perhaps it is the next step…..
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oh thats different… basically buying the crap thats returned that might have missing instructions or ripped clothing.
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quote Dave Rowland:personally Tesco’s need to be slowed down in the expansion plans, the greed of this company is huge. Everything will be tesco related one day and then when im very old, Mr Tesco will be prime minister
Maybe Mr Tesco will get Mr Cowell in as MD and then world domination shall be theirs!! 😉 :lol1:
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quote Dave Rowland:actually i disagree with that, tesco can make a huge impact to ebay…
1: they got so many people logging in to their site to order food for home delivery, so there is no reason why they cant merge the two together.
Not sure i like that idea, but I suspect that is what they are thinking.2: They can compete on postage, although they cant take on royal mail but they can offer a very competitive way of sending parcels throughout the country and even home deliver them, they have the vans and trucks.
personally Tesco’s need to be slowed down in the expansion plans, the greed of this company is huge. Everything will be tesco related one day and then when im very old, Mr Tesco will be prime minister
Selling your own goods through an auction site and offering an online auction site are two totally different things. If Tesco plan to set up an auction style format for their own goods then yes they may be able to get a slice of the pie so to speak. If they are going to run it in the Ebay format where they basically just host it how will their delivery service have any advantage to sellers? There is no way even tesco could compete in price for delivery of low cost, low volume and low weight items compared with RM.
As for web traffic, tesco’s site is barely looked at it if you compare it with ebays daily figures.
Like I said it would be good to see ebay have some decent competition but for anyone who is looking to compete with them they are going to need not only a shed load of cash but sellers by the thousands to offer the variety of items ebay currently does and to keep people interested in it. Remember Ebid, ebays main rival (its poorer cousin) people rarely use it as the variety is not there when compared with ebay, the fees for sellers are lower but without the visitors its just a waste of time.
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TESCO HAVE AN EBAY SHOP
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Will Tescos offer plotters for £150-£200 so that more people can be sign makers?
(Ebay do…..)
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I doubt if any one can compete with ebay as an auction site.
they are a unique company, a bit like Microsoft, they saw the future and exploited it.to late for anyone else to catch up now,
Peter
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quote Ian Pople:TESCO HAVE AN EBAY SHOP
I cant find it, loads of people selling Tesco products and vouchers though
Peter
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I Agree with Dave,
I think it would be relatively easy to compete with ebay given Tescos infrastructure.
They have millions of customers and all they would need to do is offer cheaper prices and good club card points and folk will swap over fairly quickly I would think, – ebay are getting extortionate.
Having said that Im surprised that they just wouldnt buy Ebay as that may be easier. But think they could take a good chunk off ebay without too much hassle.
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I agree, but it will take some time and lots of money for them to offer a real alternative to ebay, I know lots of ebay sellers are becoming increasingly concerned with the rising costs of selling on ebay.
They are big enough to do it, its how they implement it and how it works that will be the key to how successful it is.
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I agree Ebay and Paypal prices are a joke. I can pay 20% in fees on some items I sell.
I have tried Ebid, but have not had any success there since there just aren’t enough people looking at the site.
I remember the days when QXL and Ebay were competing against each other, but Ebay somehow got the lead and then started putting up their prices whilst reducing the service. Remember paying final value fee of 5.75% on sales upto £30 and 3.25% on higher amounts?
Unfortunately, Ebay will be hard to move from the top spot, but I do wish somebody would try.
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General election May 6th
Vote…
Conservative…
Labour…
lib Dem…
Tesco…..won’t be long….
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i doubt eBay will be beat… they already have years experience on anyone considering taking them on…
as has been said, the traffic is the key element. it doesn’t matter how good a site you have or how cheap you make your services. if you dont have the audience "everyone" suffers…
Tesco certainly have the customer base in the UK and could well have a successful online UK auction site, but they have a long haul ahead to gain any ground. eBay on the other hand has a worldwide audience, done the leg work and got the t-shirt. 😀reverse the the position, should tesco appear and have a great website with very original ideas incorporated. i am sure eBay will sit back and begin copying anything they think tesco’s is doing good. and why shouldn’t they?
meanwhile tesco is fighting to get established… ebay is just doing what they do, whilst taking note and acting on it. -
quote Robert Lambie:i doubt eBay will be beat… they already have years experience on anyone considering taking them on…
as has been said, the traffic is the key element. it doesn’t matter how good a site you have or how cheap you make your services. if you dont have the audience “everyone” suffers…
Tesco certainly have the customer base in the UK and could well have a successful online UK auction site, but they have a long haul ahead to gain any ground. eBay on the other hand has a worldwide audience, done the leg work and got the t-shirt. 😀reverse the the position, should tesco appear and have a great website with very original ideas incorporated. i am sure eBay will sit back and begin copying anything they think tesco’s is doing good. and why shouldn’t they?
meanwhile tesco is fighting to get established… ebay is just doing what they do, whilst taking note and acting on it.Some interesting points Rob,
I doubt too that Ebay will be beat any time soon but I think Ebay could potentially lose a big chunk very quickly.
Ebay have been losing disgruntled customers fairly quickly over the last two years and they are making serious changes. Now is the perfect time for a competitor.
With the way things are going I don’t think experience will make a vast difference as the market place is changing so rapidly. If Tesco does do something original it may well take the lead and may be hard for Ebay to catch up.
Your right though Ebay is worldwide I’m not sure about who tesco are involved with overseas and how easy to stretch oout across the world. Another point you mentioned too though is important. If Tesco take a chunk away customer will be split and both sites would suffer due to this.
Bear in mind one major advantage Tesco have – they dont need to make any money, Ebay do.
Tesco may be happy just to get some loyal customers on board and with good clubcard deals and other stuff it would be easy to do some original stuff and have a great online community.
Tesco aside, I think the major threat to Ebay will come from another source and believe that Ebay would fold over night. – Facebook now have sites/pages where you can sell and also have small ads this could be developed. Facebook could eliminate ebay without any problem and this I reckon will happen very soon. They have just about put BEBO out of business friends re-united is worthless in comparison to its value years ago. Facebook have world dominance already. Being able to sell instantly to 100’s of millions of customers – this is what will wipe out Ebay!
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Interesting points raised there Nigel, whilst there are a lot of disgruntled ebay sellers who may be leaving the site there are a load more joining every day. Whilst people complain about the fees they know they can not get the exposure they get from Ebay anyway else. If you have a unique item to sell it can be very beneficial, the only problem that arises is when you are trying to sell something several hundred others are also selling.
If Tesco were to launch a site of their own they wouldn’t get many ebayer sellers to switch if they were to sell their own products as well because they would be able to under cut everyone. That’s why Ebay works as they are just a glorified host and don’t sell their own specific products leaving the market open to all.
Ebay is one of the internet businesses that has stood the test of time, as for facebook they will struggle to implement a good auction site as they are trying to be too many things. The other point to consider is how fickle internet users are when it comes to social networking, it wasn’t that long ago when you were no one if you weren’t on my space, then BEBO, then facebook and now your totally out of it if you don’t tweet. Another social networking site is just around the corner and again everyone will switch, its just a matter of time, Facebook is at its peak right now for number of users.
The only way anyone is truly going to compete with ebay is to set up a dedicated auction site just like ebay but have the budget to advertise the hell out of it. Ebid is a great site but as already mentioned it just doesn’t get the traffic to encourage people to buy or sell. With ebay also owning paypal they have the whole package in one place.
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Nigel you make some valid comments,
ebay is more and more turning to buy it now, rather than an auction site
so maybe the whole philosophy of the auction site is now disappearing?
Tesco want to sell their products, not its customer’s old tat.
Ebay and tesco’s have a similar turnover world wide, or so I believe.
I dont know where your facts come from though, that ebay are loosing customers?
they are still growing quarter by quarter.Peter
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I don’t think the auction format is disappearing but sellers who are selling new items do prefer the buy it now so they can control costs, they can work out exactly what they need to sell the item for to make their profit after fees. There still are hundreds of people selling their own items in the auction format hoping to strike gold and with free listing for all 99p start auctions you never know.
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Hi Peter,
Re Ebay customers, I cant remember the source of customers sellers etc leaving Peter and maybe this has now reversed. Last year or was it the year before now Ebay made radical changes to stop the flow of customers leaving. Leaving or maybe still registered but not selling or buying. I would be interested to see the figures of members, active and otherwise. Be interesting to see if this happens though you are right why would Tesco want to sell second hand tat? if there was an alternative I wouldnt use Ebay.
Richard, I agree on some of you points and too are interesting however – I am not sure Ebay is one of the internet businesses that has stood the test of time as they have just ridden the wave over the last few years with and only now actually have a customer service, for years they had no customer service whats over how arrogant is that? and have survived latterly because there is no competition I think with serious competition they could lose a lot of customers.
As for facebook – they will struggle to implement a good auction site as they are trying to be too many things? I don’t think this is strictly true either, I don’t think they are trying to be too many things I think they want to be and are succeeding in becoming a genuine on-line community that people can do everything they want, shop, chat, sell, play games pretty much anything. Experts now say Facebook has technological lock in ie it has now become such an important part of peoples life they will not jump ship even if treated badly by facebook.
Whilst I agree that internet users are fickle facebook now have too many users and are now under this technological lock in. Facebook have wiped out all the others to such an extent experts reckon no new social networking site can compete? why would any one move from facebook? everything they want is there and more importantly all their friends?
Bebo are closing or selling because they cant afford to compete and this is an established site but losing users fast to Facebook.Facebook stats – who else can boast this – last month more folk logged onto to facebook than used google
ore than 400 million active users
50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
More than 35 million users update their status each day
More than 60 million status updates posted each day
More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
More than 3.5 million events created each month
More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fansThe next year or so will be one to watch as anything can and will no doubt happen.
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not really on topic but if my memory serves me right…FaceBook took a slap on the wrist for providing inaccurate stats, by tweaking how their site is used/functioned. i am being vague here because i forget the full in’s and outs of it, but i remember reading about this.
now don’t get me wrong, if its 100,000,000 instead of 50,000,000 then who really gives, its still very impressive. but not if your an advertisers paying "per advert impression". i just don’t get why an Internet monster like this would act in this fashion. money i guess… but still…
rant over. sorry, just a wee memory jog i had there :lol1: :lol1: -
I know what your saying Nigel and the stats are impressive for facebook. The only stumbling facebook and all other social netwroks will have is the advance in technology, whilst they have a great format now someone will come up with something better that everyone wants, it may not be for a year or two but it will happen.
As for ebay yeah there customer support was non existent and TBH it isn’t great these days but they are changing. They have made some stupid policies than back tracked after realising it didn’t work (Compulsory free P&P in certain categories was one). Anyway who knows some billionaire who can afford to bank roll a competitor will show up. If Ebid could get the advertising i’m sure they would do well as they have the structure just not enough visitors.
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quote Robert Lambie:not really on topic but if my memory serves me right…FaceBook took a slap on the wrist for providing inaccurate stats, by tweaking how their site is used/functioned. i am being vague here because i forget the full in’s and outs of it, but i remember reading about this.
now don’t get me wrong, if its 100,000,000 instead of 50,000,000 then who really gives, its still very impressive. but not if your an advertisers paying “per advert impression”. i just don’t get why an Internet monster like this would act in this fashion. money i guess… but still…
rant over. sorry, just a wee memory jog i had there :lol1: :lol1:Aye the stats I posted were from Facebook Rob – but the facebook getting more traffic was from an independent source – check the graph Google and everyone else should be quaking in their boots! Are the ads on Facebook not all pay per click?
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http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/03/face … -per-week/
would help if I put the link in right enough –
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im going back a couple of years nigel… they could now well be "pay per click". maybe changed due to it getting out… who knows? i think the key point is "if they did it, they did it for a reason". im sure if they didnt the folk pointing the finger would have been taken to the cleaners by such an internet giant …
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this is a condensed assessment I worked from and you might find some useful facts in it 😉
nik
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quote Nicola McIntosh:this is a condensed assessment I worked from and you might find some useful facts in it 😉
nik
That looks very interesting Nicola – off to bed to read it!
Nigel
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quote Nigel Hindley:off to bed to read it!Nigel
Jeepers Nigel…. get up will ya??? 😮
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One thing you all have’nt taken into account is Television. Tesco would launch a massive TV campaign and it would be on every commercial break Just like Confused.com. until it drove you mad.
This would hit Ebay. -
quote Harry Cleary:quote Nigel Hindley:off to bed to read it!
Nigel
Jeepers Nigel…. get up will ya??? 😮
nah!
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