How eBay is working to get more on-time Christmas deliveries and shed its yard-sale image

Ten days before Christmas, Patricia Curry placed two online orders for last-minute gifts. A GPS device for her mother arrived from Best Buy (BBY) with days to spare.

With time running out, Curry was still waiting on Dec. 22 for the CD she ordered for her husband from eBay (EBAY). "Sometimes on eBay you just don't know what you're getting," says Curry, a resident of Frazer, Pa.

Her assessment speaks to the order-fulfillment problems bedeviling eBay in the heart of the holiday selling season. As auction sales of secondhand goods have dwindled and large liquidators of new products have moved in, the e-commerce pioneer finds itself competing more closely with Amazon.com (AMZN) and Wal-Mart (WMT). It also means eBay doesn't have as tight a control of its supply chain as rivals. "Amazon has seen a lot of growth because of its practices that put the consumer first," says Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets. "It's difficult for eBay, which is not a retailer, to compete."

EBay's expansion into selling new products has brought in more customers who expect cheap, fast delivery; flexible return policies; and attentive customer support. Those have been tough demands for the company to achieve, and could be affecting the site's popularity. In November, eBay's online visitors dropped by 8%, to 51.2 million, compared with a year earlier, according to Nielsen NetView. During the same period, Amazon's visitors rose 6% to 60.9 million.

Now, working with its patchwork of sellers, San Jose-based eBay says it's speeding delivery times and improving service. In the past year, the e-commerce company has created new incentives for its sellers to improve fulfillment, offering financial discounts and better placement in search results on the site to merchants who get the best ratings from customers.




Reliability Goal

In September, eBay added shipment tracking codes for merchants to use on the site. That gives sellers a way to prove they shipped a package on time in cases where a delivery service like FedEx (FDX) or UPS (UPS) is late. "This is part of the whole picture of [eBay] getting more involved and more controlled like Amazon," says Dan Mordente, an eBay seller since 1996.

It's also part of Chief Executive John Donahoe's plan to increase the perception among shoppers that eBay is a reliable destination. "I've got investors who are really pushing us to market [the new incentives] aggressively this fourth quarter," Donahoe said during a September interview. Instead, Donahoe plans to hold off on a marketing campaign about customer service until 2010.

Hanging in the balance is whether eBay can shed its yard-sale image and compete toe-to-toe with some of retail's biggest players. Online holiday sales have heated up as snow fell across the Eastern U.S. this week, as many consumers who were stuck at home shopped online instead. Internet sales grew 13% during the weekend of Dec. 19 vs. a year earlier, according to data released Dec.

[businessweek]

Wal-Mart teeter-totters on our green radar, hitting both high and low notes for green. But this latest idea comes right out of left field. In order to beat out Amazon, the giant of American consumerism has dreamed up allowing customers to pick up online orders via drive-thru at store locations. It's faster than waiting for online orders to be delivered. But is it doomed for failure like Blockbuster's plan for competing with Netflix? And more importantly, for a store so intense about greening up the packaging and products on its shelves, is this a very eco-friendly idea?

According to the Wall Street Journal, it's Wal-Mart's brilliant idea to edge in on our car-oriented and gimme-now culture in order to better compete with an online store that delivers right to one's door...but days later. Instead, customers can shop online, select one of more than 1.5 million products - thousands of which are not available in stores - have it shipped to a local Wal-Mart (instead of their own door) and then drive to go pick it up from a drive-thru window, never needing to actually exit their vehicle.

"There was a time when the online and offline businesses were viewed as being different," said Walmart.com Chief Executive Raul Vazquez. "Now we are realizing that we actually have a physical advantage thanks to our thousands of stores, and we can use it to become No. 1 online." Heading into Christmas, the company said 40% of its online orders are being delivered through stores.

The advantages are that you don't have to find a parking spot or deal with crowds. But we want to know the difference in emissions from having a FedEx or UPS delivery truck head to your door, versus a shippment going to Wal-Mart and you driving to go get it - likely also idling in a drive-thru line. Is that any greener than starting, shutting off, and starting your car again as you arrive and depart from the Wal-Mart parking lot?

As the article states, Wal-Mart is hoping that the move piggy-backs on its supply-chain deliveries, which means possibly fewer trucks on the road; yet they also are hoping people won't actually use the drive-thru window service, but rather going to the store itself will "lure" people inside for additional purchases, defeating the idea of skipping parking lot congestion.

There are a lot of variables, and it certainly isn't an immediately greener way to shop. Does it just help encourage slovenly consumerism, or does the mere fact that we have this service available shame us into greener shopping and transportation habits? As we recently noted, Black Friday shopping was about 50 times more carbon intensive than Cyber Monday shopping, since in-person shopping has a much larger footprint than online shopping in many instances. This plan is a hybrid of both, but does nothing to minimize the impact of in-person shopping.

As Matt at Gizmodo points out, "I'd be curious to see Best Buy's in-store pickup numbers, since they've been doing it for a long time, though as appealing a symptom of the American condition as this is, I kinda doubt it's gonna take a chunk out of Amazon."

Recovery from the recession is not yet in reach, but online retailers are ready to start spending all the same.

E-tailers know online consumers demand a top-notch shopping experience, and that difficulties navigating e-commerce Websites can lose them sales. Internet Retailer and Vovici Corp. found that more than seven in 10 Web merchants planned to spend more on advanced e-commerce applications and services this year.

This includes replacing a whole e-commerce platform as well as adding services such as customer reviews and ratings, product personalization, live chat and improved site search.

Social marketing was also high on e-tailers’ list of priorities, with nearly one-half planning to add initiatives this year.

“The last time many retailers installed a new e-commerce platform was five years ago, and those systems aren’t robust enough to support all of the new technology that’s changing the very nature of how consumers are shopping online,” David Fry, founder of Fry Inc., told Internet Retailer. “Smart retailers know they need to implement better technology now or they’ll miss out on the recovery and a big opportunity.”


[emarkerter]

Mobile payments company Billing Revolution announced that it now has a status as a Mobile Commerce Partner with PayPal, enabling PayPal merchants to conduct mobile credit card transactions using their existing PayPal Payflow Pro gateway accounts.

There are roughly 45,000 merchants that process transactions via PayPal Payflow gateway, and all of them now have the ability to sell their stuff to consumers on a mobile phone — although it’s unclear just how many of them will sign-up for the service.

And that’s about all we got to share regarding this news. Plus there’s the quote from Andy Kleitsch, CEO of Billing Revolution, who said: “Enabling mobile transactions for all PayPal merchants represents a strategic step forward for Billing Revolution. PayPal merchants wishing to conduct mobile credit card transactions can now safely and easily use Billing Revolution to process transactions through their existing PayPal accounts.”

Now we only have to see whether merchants will show interest and actually start implementing the new mobile payment feature. We certainly hope they’ll jump on board…




About Billing Revolution

Billing Revolution, the leader in mobile commerce, enables merchants, payment processors and payment gateways to easily conduct credit card transactions with mobile users. Backed by SK Telecom Ventures, a global leader in mobile services based in Seoul Korea, Billing Revolution is changing the way merchants interact with mobile customers. Sharing information with mobile users is no longer enough. Every mobile strategy going forward should include a healthy dose of commerce, and Billing Revolution is here to make that dream reality. Billing Revolution is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, with sales offices in New York City.

[intromobile]