Amazon.com                    eBay

REVENUE PER         $392,000                      $687,000
EMPLOYEE

PROFITABILITY      -$124.5 million                $2.4 million

CUSTOMER             8.4 million                   3.8 million
BASE

COMMUNITY           About two-thirds of           eBay's members are
APPEAL              Amazon.com's buyers           intensely loyal and
                    are repeat customers.         spend an average of
                                                  130 minutes a month
                                                  on the site-double
                                                  that of any other
                                                  Web site.

EASE OF             Invented one-click            Few sellers take
BUYING              ordering, eliminating         credit cards, and
                    time-consuming data           auctions take days
                    entry with each order.        to play out.
                    Uses software to sug-
                    gest products buyers
                    might like.

BRAND               52%                           32%
RECOGNITION         (101 million U.S. adults)     (63 million U.S. adults)

MARKET              Keeps adding new products     Despite looking into
FOCUS               every few months, poten-      other pricing schemes
                    tially diluting its brand.    and merchants, eBay is
                                                  holding fast to its core
                                                  person-to-person auction
                                                  sales.

MARKET              Its business model and        Its person-to-person
OPPORTUNITIES       rapidly growing distribu-     focus could lose the
                    tion capability make it       company fixed-price
                    easier to add almost any      revenue and business-
                    new product.                  to-consumer auction
                                                  sales.

MANAGEMENT          CEO Jeff Bezos, backed by     CEO Meg Whitman has
                    highly regarded CFO Joy       extensive branding
                    Covey and former Wal-Mart     experience at Hasbro
                    execs, gets higher marks      and Disney, and
                    for vision, drive, and        Senior Vice-President
                    near-flawless execution.      for Marketing Brian
                                                  Swette was executive
                                                  vice-president at
                                                  Pepsi-Cola.


DATA: MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER, MEDIA METRIX, BRAND INSTITUTE, AMAZON.COM, 
eBAY