EBay Takes Its Price Matching Program To United Kingdom

In a bid to counter intensifying competition, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) has extended its price matching program to the U.K.

The online retail giant yesterday announced the launch of Price Match Guarantee on select items listed on its UK site. The announcement came just two weeks after the company announced the same program in the U.S.

We note that over the last one year, the eBay stock has underperformed the Zacks Internet - Commerce industry. It gained 45.1% compared with the industry’s gain of 49.4%. We expect ongoing replatforming and brand enhancement initiatives to lead to an upside.

Intelligent Use of Competitive Pricing

Like the U.S., eBay launched a coupon system in the U.K. to pay the difference in price. To avail the coupon, a shopper would have to point out that the same product is being offered at a lesser price by a competitor.

An item claimed for price match must be one of more than the 20,000 items sold through eBay Deals. Items being compared must be exactly the same and in stock at the time of claiming the price match. Six major online retailers - Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) , Tesco (LON:TSCO), Asda, Johnlewis, Currys and Argos are considered competitors in this program.

In the U.S. 50,000 items are available in eBay Deals and eligible for the program. Those considered competitors are Amazon, HomeDepot, Sears, Target (NYSE:TGT) , BestBuy, Jet.com, Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) or Wayfair. eBay Deals is open to all and does not require membership.

eBay Inc. Revenue (TTM)

Bottom Line

E-commerce, with a large user base worldwide, has turned out to be a sweet spot with more and more companies jumping into the area. To gain an edge and outmuscle rivals, many of these players are adopting the price match program, with eBay being the latest addition to the list.

As eBay’s core business continues to face tough competition from the likes of Amazon and Wal-Mart, the new move appears to be one of the many counter strategies to fend off competition.

Currently, eBay has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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