Walmart Takes On Craigslist And E-Bay
March 24, 2011
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Walmart Takes On Craigslist And E-Bay
Perhaps, brick and mortar Walmart is taking a page out of the online retailer E-Bay’s book by entering the free classifieds market. That would lead one to suspect these free classifieds sites are income producers.
E-Bay was looking for different marketing opportunities when it turned to Craigslist in 2004. At that time they purchased a 25% interest in Craigslist. This seemed like on odd move for the retailer, as most of Craigslist classifieds are offered for free. In the process E-Bay had out maneuvered many Silicon Valley venture capitalists, as well as companies like Yahoo and Google
Insiders would later reveal that the honeymoon didn’t last long. Tensions between the camps mounted over time. E-Bay’s 25% position gave it control of one of three board seats. Then in early July of 2007 E-Bay launches it own free classifieds site Kijiji.
By April 2008 E-bay sues Craigslist for shareholder dilution. Many writers rejoiced seeing these purveyors of used items going at each other. And to make things more interesting, of course, Craigslist counter sues. Craigslist alleges E-Bay was performing corporate spying.
Then as these corporate giants slug it out, The Wall Street Journal, reported today that Walmart has quietly joined the free online marketplace for classified ads. Wow, that’s three giants feeding at the same trough.
It seems Walmart is teaming up with another classified website Oodle.com. Now, finding this area on the Walmart site was not an easy task. If you use their search feature on the site it will provide you with 435 products related to “Free Classifieds.” You have to use the site directory which is found on the bottom of the home page. Click on it and you will see the link for classifieds. Follow that and you will eventually arrive at your destination.
Since the Wall street Journal failed to provide that url, here it is www.oddle.walmart.com. One is left to wonder how Walmart will deal with the onslaught of spam that will surely target their new venture. This should be interesting since Oodle has been a spammer haven for sometime. They pull ads from other sites and place them on their site. So there is not a whole lot of filtering going on here.
From my perspective this might be a very smart move for Walmart. Their market is a low income customer or someone interested in saving money. This is the same demographic that these other websites are targeting.
So let’s say you have a $30.00 budget for a used DVD player and you visit Wal-Mart’s free classifieds option. While on Wal-Mart’s site you search for a DVD player and you find a new one under warranty for $49.00. All a sudden that new DVD player at $49.00 starts to look real good.
Update 03/25/2011: I can’t remember when the last time I heard anything about Kijiji. It seemed so promising at the time but the buzz was no more.
And I never thought I would something good to say about Walmart!
What say you?
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