eBay Popularity In Australia Wanes As Temu Shines In New Fonto Report
Australian consumer research company Fonto has released new data ranking popular ecommerce marketplaces, revealing eBay has dropped to third place as Temu growth continues.
The report shows Temu passing eBay for the first time in October 2024, knocking the once favorite ecommerce site down a notch while Amazon continues to dominate.
Market Share
Fonto data has revealed that, for the first time since its Australian launch, Temu has passed eBay for total market share of pure play Online Retailers as it continues its rapid ascent.
Launching in early 2023, Temu’s share of spend in the category jumped to 20% for the month of October 2024, with eBay (17%) dropping to its lowest point since Fonto started recording market level data. This continues a steady decline for eBay from a peak of 43% at the beginning of 2022.
Amazon continues to lead the category, capturing just over half of all Online Retail spend during October, a 16% gain on their share during the same period in 2023.
Additionally, October marked the second consecutive month where Temu’s market penetration (10.9%) exceeded eBay’s (10.4%).
Temu’s growth has also come at the cost of smaller retailers such as Kogan, Catch and The Iconic, all of which have showed steady market share decline since launch.
The data comes from more than 80,000 Australians who voluntarily share their financial transactions data privately and securely with Fonto, allowing the company to understand buyer behaviour over time to better understand the 'why' behind their purchase decisions.
While Amazon's dominance has been a foregone conclusion in the US for many years at this point, eBay had long held the top spot in the ecommerce popularity contest in Australia.
But they began to lose their footing in the country in 2022, with Amazon finally overtaking them in 2023 - and it doesn't look like that's going to change again any time soon.
Liz Morton
CEO Jamie Iannone has faced growing questions from investors about the competition eBay may face from Temu, but has previously downplayed the possible impact saying the low average value, new consumer goods from China aren't a threat to eBay's bread and butter non-new in season consumer to consumer core strength or luxury and "enthusiast" items at the heart of his "focus vertical" strategy.
But contrary to those public statements, he has been busy quietly growing sales from China over the last year, making it eBay's third largest market when measured by seller location - with much of those sales consisting of cross border trade coming from China to the US and other countries, particularly in Motors Parts and Accessories, which is one of eBay's largest categories.
Liz Morton
eBay is also clearly looking to increase their business within China as well, recently introducing Alipay to unlock new ways to pay on the site for over a billion potential buyers in the country.
Liz Morton
But eBay isn't just competing with Temu for buyers and sellers, increasingly they're also competing for talent as key business development leaders have jumped ship to Temu, TikTok and more.
Liz Morton
The pressure is mounting worldwide as well, with Temu overtaking eBay to become the 2nd most-visited ecommerce website in August, according to Juozas Kaziukėnas of Marketplace Pulse and traffic stats from SimilarWeb.
And with Temu now opening up to US brands and merchants, it's going to be game on in 2025 - will their quest to take on Amazon leave eBay even further in the dust?
