Ebay

EBay has paved the wave in this industry and being in a billion dollar industry making things happen to benefit consumers in many ways.[5]

Dembosky, A. (2012). Ebay moves beyond its dotcom roots. Available:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df3723ca-1773-11e2-8cbe-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EbzDqb5Y. Last accessed 10th Dec 2012

Ebay is primarily service providers who connect the sellers and buyers by providing platform to sell and buy any goods.

EBay is an American transnational corporation that utilizes an online interface to transmit its business globally. To become a transnational corporation your business must facilitate its operations in more than one country. EBay hosts an online marketplace where consumers and merchants can trade new and used goods for discounted prices. EBay has made it easier to shop from other countries through the process of deterritorialization. The website is also a good example of globalizing culture; which will be discussed later in the paper. EBay has not only transformed the online marketplace, but has been especially successful doing so. In an interview conducted with Entrepreneur.com, a former Fortune 500 company IT consultant stated that, “EBay became a $10 billion company selling something used cheaper than new,” (Girard, 2011.) This emphasizes how successful this business has become and what the future may hold for EBay as well as companies alike.

Outsourcing is a method used by many corporations in which their products are manufactured in foreign countries often for cheaper labor.This method method of productions has it’s pros and cons.

Outsourcing is that a product or service provided by outside vendors which but was previously provided internally or that could be provided internally(Pearlson, 2001).It is an effective approach for information system implement in a business organization but a risky one.

Read the case carefully and answer the following questions: 1.Till 2005, eBay EachNet was the leader in the Chinese e-commerce market, controlling more than half of it. But eBay EachNet soon lost its market leadership position to Taobao.com (Taobao). In this context, analyze the reasons that can be attributed to Taobao’s edge over eBay. 2.a. To enable people to trade with each other, Pierre Omidyar created a marketplace in September 1995 which was later called eBay. By mid 1997, eBay received one million page hits per

25. What are the merits of outsourcing the performance of certain value chain activities as opposed to performing them in-house? Under what circumstances does outsourcing make good strategic sense?

Overtock.com is an online retailer that started out in 1997 that offered brand-name merchandise at discount prices. In 2005, Overstock.com noticed that their call center infrastructure was beginning to show signs of stress which barred them from performing the excellent 24/7 customer service that differentiated them from many of their competitors. The ever increasing call volume reached a peak during the holiday seasons and being that the volume of calls was too much to handle, Overstock.com outsourced the overflow. Their outsourcer’s contact center was on a separate platform and ran different systems than Overstock.com’s in-house systems which prevented quality control of the customer service provided to their clients. The limitations of their

"A one-day increase in responsiveness is huge in outsourced manufacturing", says Robert Meshew, IT Systems group program manager in the Microsoft Home and Entertainment division. "It means you have the time to respond to problems, potentially saving thousands of dollars in unnecessary air freight and expediting costs".

Outsourcing Work. Outsourcing means just what it says - going "out" to find a "source" to undertake the work. The most obvious advantage of outsourcing appeared to be the cost savings that would come with not having to purchase additional equipment or work space and not having to add to the employee headcount. However, it was noted that some organisations are now doing more themselves in order to develop or preserve their expertise and self-sufficiency.

E-commerce is a product that has been available since the early 90’s. It is something that people are familiar with. A product that is now part and parcel of people’s lives.

Outsourcing refers to hiring an outside, independent firm to perform a business function that internal employees might otherwise perform. Many organizations outsource jobs to specialized service companies, which frequently operate abroad. The outsourcing trend stands to continue; the latest wave of outsourcing impacts the information technology field. IT outsourcing includes data center operations, desktop and help desk support, software development, e-commerce outsourcing, software applications services, network operations and disaster recovery.2

The company eBay Inc. is an American multinational Internet consumer-to-consumer corporation. Founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar in San Jose, California, it is now a multi-billion dollar business with operations localized in over thirty countries including China and India. It’s main enterprise is eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website that allows people and businesses to buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services internationally. Millions of collectibles, décor, appliances, computers, furnishings, equipment, domain names, vehicles, services, intangibles and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, or sold daily on eBay. Anything can be auctioned on the site as long as it is not illegal and does not violate the eBay’s Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.

Outsourcing: A company can save the cost and create a value if any of the value chain activity can be performed outside the company otherwise performed in-house. Companies withdraw from a few noncore activities and rely upon the outside company to supply a part of the product or services that is not a company 's core competency. Outsourcing can increase competitiveness any time when the same activity performed better at a lower cost, these activities are not a core capabilities of the company, it reduces time and speeds up the process, allow organizational flexibility, and allows concentration on the core business competencies that the company does best. Normally, before making any strategic move, a cost-benefit analysis is performed to decide, if off-shore, on-shore or service contract to another firm is necessary and the best move from a strategy perspective. Off-shore outsourcing adds a complex foreign supplier, global trade into the equation and requires consideration of a global strategy as part of the generic strategy.