EBay Debuts Its Answer To Amazon Lockers: Click & Collect At Retail Stores, While eBay Now Goes Abroad
E-commerce giant eBay today made its latest moves to blur the lines between online and offline commerce, and it's chosen the UK to do it: it launched a new “Click & Collect” service …
Context & Ripple Effects
This launch extends a line eBay has been walking since at least 2010, when it first sent shoppers to offline retail stores, and since late 2011 paid buyers $10 to make returns through physical locations — evidence that Donahoe's team treats store networks as fulfillment infrastructure rather than competition. The UK is the proving ground for both halves of the strategy announced today: Click & Collect pickup points positioned explicitly as an answer to Amazon Lockers, and eBay Now same-day delivery making its first move outside the US.
First-order effects
- UK shoppers gain two new ways to receive eBay purchases — collect from partner retail stores or get same-day delivery via eBay Now — while the partner retailers hosting pickup points get foot traffic they would otherwise lose to Amazon's locker network.
Second-order effects
- Amazon now faces a direct counter to Lockers in one of its strongest non-US markets, and the pressure lands alongside eBay's confirmed push to nearly double marketplace active users by around 2016 and double PayPal payment volume — fulfillment convenience becomes the battleground for both growth targets.
- Retailers signing on as collection points are effectively choosing a side in the Amazon-eBay logistics race, and eBay's earlier claim that Amazon's merchant fee hikes could push sellers toward eBay gives those merchants an additional reason to back the challenger's infrastructure.
Third-order effects
- If Click & Collect and eBay Now scale beyond the UK, marketplace competition shifts from listing fees and selection to who controls the last-mile pickup layer — with eBay lobbying hard against US sales-tax legislation in April 2013, the company is fighting regulation and building physical distribution at the same time to keep its cost base competitive with Amazon's.
The trend: Marketplaces are converging on hybrid online-offline fulfillment, with eBay and Amazon racing to turn third-party retail space into their own delivery networks.