The Apple-Android story in product e-commerce
“You can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
…is to press play.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why
Times change. Industries change. Apple heralded the golden era of smartphones, and while it still is a dominant player, Android smartphones now have an 86% marketshare. Apple vs. Android battle has primarily been the battle of a closed integrated system vs. an open modular system.
A similar battle will likely play out in product e-commerce as it matures. In this battle, Amazon will play the role of Apple and other e-commerce players will play the role of Android. Apple will dominate but not to the extent we imagine right now.
Why Android equivalents will develop
Every industry goes through a journey of integration to modularization. When an industry is nascent, integrated players emerge to solve a tough problem. As the different components required to solve the problem become better understood and the interfaces between them become standardized, modularized players evolve. This is what happened in the case of smartphones. Apple defined the smartphone and then Android phones sprung up with different pieces of hardware and software put together.
Even after quite a few years of existence, product e-commerce is still a problem that has not been completely solved because of the heavy element of operations. Therefore, an integrated strategy still makes sense. Amazon is trying to pursue that strategy by owning the entire stack from logistics to merchandising. It is continuing to tweak on that stack and make itself more and more differentiated.
However, as e-commerce grows to capture more than just 9% of the retail sales in US, modularization will become more prominent. Logistics processes (packaging, shipping, authentication, returns) will become well defined and third party players will emerge (and are emerging) to manage these aspects. Similarly, thanks to Apple pay, Paypal, etc., payment will cease (and has ceased) to be as much a barrier as it used to be. All of this will lead to the shoppers becoming more comfortable with buying online from a range of websites (marketplaces/ retailers). Confidence/ trust will become less of an issue and the fashion and brand preferences of these shoppers will come to the fore. They will diversify beyond Amazon online the way they have diversified beyond Walmart offline.
How modularization will manifest itself
As this modularization happens, we will see the emergence of interesting buy-side experiences that will leverage the scale of more open marketplaces such as eBay. Specifically, eBay will become even more open and adopt a modular strategy to remain competitive. It has already opened up its inventory for anyone to utilize with the recent launch of its buy-side APIs. These APIs allow end-to-end transactions to happen off-eBay. However, it will not stop there. It will also partner with third party logistics providers to fill the gaps in its stack so that it achieves the baseline expectations of shoppers on delivery, returns, etc. Figure below shows the visualization of the stack.
Interesting buy-side experiences built on top of open marketplaces will fulfill very tactical but important needs similar to how Android filled the need of having a smartphone without going broke. A live example is Wikibuy, a Chrome plugin, that does price comparison when you are shopping online and tells you if it finds a better deal.
More examples were highlighted in this WSJ article recently. Retailers such as Crate & Barrel are filling their inventory gaps by partnering with different intermediaries without owning the inventory. These intermediaries such as RevCascade (a dropshipper) are taking up a bigger role in curation and analytics to make sure only the best products show up on Crate & Barrel so that Crate & Barrel is able to maintain its reputation as a more tasteful yet exhaustive online retailer of home furnishings than Amazon. Retailers across different niches are also doing the same thing to make sure they continue to occupy the mind-space they had in the offline world in their domain (sports, fashion apparel, motor parts, etc.).
Why Amazon will continue to go the Apple way
While the industry transforms, Amazon will double down on the stuff that makes it special. This is obvious from all the investments it is making into things like Prime Air. This is the only way it will be able to make the billions of dollars it has spent building warehouses still count. Similarly, it would want to make the most of the economics of each shopper by not encouraging off-Amazon transactions. A shopper visiting Amazon’s site is much more profitable for Amazon than a shopper who completes the purchase off-Amazon. This is because of Amazon’s ability to sell ads which has become a $1 billion business already and the chance that it can promote bundling to limit its shipping cost as a percent of sales.
One not so obvious factor that will keep Amazon on it’s Apple like path is the competition with Walmart. Walmart wants to play the same game as Amazon which means Amazon cannot let go now.
The one big difference compared to the Apple-Android play in smartphones probably is that in e-commerce, I don’t see a Google that will dominate the modularized industry. That Google will have to be a player in the merchandising layer of the stack but it is not obvious who that could be. It might as well end up being multiple droids dancing.
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