Betty Shriver is the owner of Betty’s Crystal, a small shop that sells collectible glass figurines in Metamora, Indiana. She has hired me to be a consultant for her on building her ideas and to help her develop an expansion strategy for her online business activities using either Amazon.com or eBay and by using social networking sites. Before I can go into helping Betty decide if Amazon.com or eBay is better suited for her needs, I need to get some background information on the two companies.
Amazon.com is a “US-based multinational electronic commerce company and it’s the largest online retailer in the US, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010” (Wikipedia, 2011, para. 1). Amazon.com was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and he launched it online in 1995. Although they mainly are a retail store, the company launched Amazon.com Auctions, a web auction service, in March 1999. Amazon.com has two different price points for selling items on their site. One is called “Sell your Stuff”, which is for individual sellers who expect to sell less than 40 items a month, which cost $0.99 per sale plus a referral fee and a variable closing fee for each media product sold. The other option is called “Sell Professionally”, which is for professional sellers who expect to sell more the 40 items a month, and has a monthly cost of $39.99 plus referral fees and closing fees for each media product sold. eBay Inc. is an “American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide” (Wikipedia, 2011, para. 1). eBay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and Michael Dean
