eBay and 3 Predictions for the Automotive Aftermarket

The online giant eBay is growing and evolving with both consumers and merchants in mind. It’s now more than an online auction site and “the world’s online marketplace.” It has evolved into sales platforms and technologies, through its many subsidiaries, supporting both online and offline retail sales. There’s a solution for large online retailers as well as “mom and pop” local retailers. Today, eBay’s mission is to take the “e” out of “eCommerce” and support commerce at all levels through all channels. Shopping anytime, anywhere is eBay’s new vision. Here are our predictions for eBay and the automotive aftermarket.

Prediction 1: PayPal will expand and take market share from Mastercard and Visa in local shopping. Ebay is on the way to making its own universal payment method, both online and off. With PayPal Access, consumers are able to able to sign into any online retailer with their PayPal credentials without creating their own account.

To enhance its mobile payment platform, eBay announced a partnership with Discover in August, 2012. Discover’s CEO said PayPal is making its way into more than seven million actual retail stores across the country. The partnership allows PayPal to assist Discover with payment method flexibility, while Discover will help PayPal expand into the brick-and-mortar industry by integrating PayPal into millions of Point of Sale (POS) terminals. Expect PayPal to make its way into plenty of auto parts stores across the nation in the coming years. (And we were fortunate to see a prototype PayPal card designed to carry in your wallet; let’s just say it is much different than the credit cards you carry now.)

Prediction 2: GSI Commerce, Magento and X.commerce will continue double-digit growth for the foreseeable future. With the purchase of GSI Commerce, eBay is able to connect with large retailers and take advantage of multichannel retailing and digital marketing for global enterprises, both domestically and internationally. With the purchase, eBay acquired seven warehouses that allows stocking and shipping of a retailer’s merchandise. GSI Commerce also has a variety of digital marketing products for customers.

GSI is already used by hundreds of the nation’s largest brands. With GSI Commerce comes Magento, eBay’s open source eCommerce platform (now owned by Adobe), and X.commerce, eBay’s technology platform (which was sunsetted in 2013). Billions of sales dollars—billions—are being transacted on sites built on Magento, flowing through GSI Commerce warehouses, or being paid for with PayPal.

Prediction 3: Ebay will invest millions to support local search using mobile. Local search, using phones and tablets, will be a battle between Google, eBay, Apple and others, and don’t count eBay out. It will support local retailers through local search in order to capture more PayPal fees. The “holy grail” of local search is real-time inventory, so consumers can know whether or not the product is immediately available, and eBay wants to lead the way. And eBay will already process $10 billion in transactions through mobile devices in 2012.

Tomorrow: Trend 26 and our predictions about Amazon.

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