The fight for Christmas shoppers

More people than ever are expected to shop online this holiday season, ... eBay, the online auctioneer, and Amazon, which sells everything from textbooks to pet supplies, remained the nation's two most-visited retail Web sites during last year's holiday season, but Walmart.com and Target.com came in third and fifth, respectively, ... [New, less tech-savvy online shoppers] care more about low prices and are likelier to recognize and trust the names of stores they know well, such as Gap or Wal-Mart, over online merchants like Amazon or eBay.

"What we've seen is that the demographics of shopping online have begun to more closely mirror America in general," says Raul Vazquez, chief marketing officer at Walmart.com.

Getting an online-only brand in front of these cautious shoppers, and getting them to trust that brand, must represent one of eBay's biggest challenges for the next few years. The purchase of Shopping.com, a price comparison site which shows eBay merchants alongside other internet retailers, has to be a step towards this. To move forward in this new climate, they must turn themselves from "internet market place" to simply "the world's shopping mall".