eBay, the world's largest marketplace for online auctions is facing competition from a new player, Amazon.com. Will its strong business model and USP come to its rescue?

Amazon.com, a Fortune 500 company, the number one books site for online buyers had begun to compete with Wal-Mart and The Home Depot while it was selling only books. But now, it no longer confines itself to targeting the inefficient, multistep value chain of the bookseller. The company has started offering services of selling used goods alongside its expanding list of new products. It feels like Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com's CEO, aims to make Amazon.com "a place where you can buy anything and everything." Amazon.com is into selling power tools, consumer electronics, cosmetics, and now has also ventured into online auction and is competing with already existent players like eBay. However, such competition hardly surprises eBay as it has been the most successful e-commerce business enterprise so far. In an interview with BusinessWeek, Meg Whitman, CEO, eBay Inc., says, "eBay is a business that took unique advantage of the properties of the Net, the Net's ability to connect many to many thus allowing a business to be created where there was no land-based analog."

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