Retail Strategies and Analyses for Amazon and Ebay

What is a Retail Strategy?
A retail strategy is a clear and definite plan outlined by a retailer to target a market. Retail strategies aim to build long term relationships with customers. Retail strategies outline the mission and vision of the retail organization. Elements of a Retail Strategy include the target market segments that the retailer plans to focus its retail mix and resources, the retail format to include the retail mix and a sustainable competitive advantage.
The Strategic Retail Planning process includes:
1. Defining the business mission
2. Conducting a Situation Audit, Market Attractiveness Analysis, Competitor Analysis and a Self-Analysis of the organization
3. Identifying Strategic Opportunities
4. Evaluating Strategic Alternatives
5. Establishing specific objectives and allocating resources
6. Developing a Retail Mix to implement the Retail Strategy
7. Evaluating performance and making adjustments
SWOT Analysis for Amazon
The SWOT analysis for Amazon includes detailing the opportunities and threats in the retail environment and the strengths and weaknesses of the retail business relative to eBay and other competitors. The elements explored include:
1. Market factors to include size, growth seasonality and business cycles.
2. Competitive Factors to include barriers to entry, bargaining power of vendors and competitive rivalry.
3. Internal factors to include capability of managers, location, financial resources, merchandise, operations and customer loyalty.
Strengths
• Page speed. Great focus for Amazon. The time taken for a webpage to load can have a tremendous impact on user experience and ultimately sales.
• Personalized Shopping Experience through initiatives such as showing recently viewed products, relate...

... middle of paper ...

...uccess has been primarily sustained by the enthusiasm of its users. One instant advantage of this is evident in the way communities of users form based on their common interests. With an increasing user base, eBay has been wise in capitalizing on that asset in other ways, especially fixed price sales.

eBay’s business model is to act as a mediator between seller and buyer, taking a percentage of the sales. This frees eBay from worrying about the details, and allows the company to concentrate on maximizing its membership base and overall use of the website.

In a nutshell, the underlying reason for eBay’s success is as a result of offering a shopping solution that is quite remarkable, a link between the internet and everyday life with the ability to search for a world of objects. This is conceivably the main reason which accounts for eBay’s growing profitability.