Ebay in China - Case Study

Amazon and Ebay are two well-known brands of online shopping sites. They have evolved and grown from small firms to the giants of e-commerce today. In this essay, a comparison would be made between the two firms.

Ebay is one of the world's largest e-commerce and multinational corporation. Here are some facts, the company was launched in 1995 as " Auction Web," on labor day weekend by Pierre Omidyar. Later the name was officially changed to ebay in 1997 because many customers and media coverage referred the website as ebay. It has over 200 million registered users by 2015 and branched out into twenty five countries. There are thirty five thousand employees working on eBay in that 42% are female. The company net revenue by 2014 is 17.9 billion dollars. There are about 25 million sellers and the number of items listed in the market places are 800 million. The daily search on eBay is 250 million and the hourly search is 11 million. 60% of company revenue comes from

Alibaba.com clearly dominates the Chinese e-commerce accounting billion transactions in the recent years. Through its English-language wholesale platform, the company supports the global trade by using a business-to-business model (B2B). The firm incursions into the U.S. market in a time when global e-commerce is absolutely competitive and unprecedented (Clifford,

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.

Critically assess eBay.s choice of market entry strategy for China (use Key Country Matrix), listing both the advantages and disadvantages of its acquisition strategy (use Drivers (YIP) -CAGE Matrix). 30%

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

This shows an unexpected approach in comparison to different US retailers that utilize E-Commerce passages in China to start their development of the organization (Bailey,

eBay Incorporated is an American multinational e-commerce company with a presence across the world. It engages in b2b as well as c2c model of business. The company rose during the dot com bubble in the mid-1990s and is now one of the largest e-commerce companies in the world along with Amazon and Alibaba. Pierre Omidyar founded the company in 1995 in San Jose, California.

However, most consumers of China do not trust e-commercial retailers since e-commerce market still has a rather shorter history in China. Most researchers found out that prices of most Dotcoms

Electronic commerce has been there for a long time now, and it is a practice that is practiced by peoples from Germany, France, and the US on a daily basis. Since its inception around 40 years ago, e-commerce has continued to grow as innovations, technologies and a lot of business reverting to the use of the e-commerce. The aspect of buying and selling of goods in the early 1960s was sluggish with the traditional way of mailing of documents being replaced with the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which would later pave a way to the electronic commerce. After the e-commerce, however, the practice was not more reliable as it still had many challenges (Tsolis, 2009). For instance, it was not easy for buyers to see products from the comfort of their homes and more so, the methods of accessing the information were limited.

Many market opportunities have helped the Alibaba Group thrive in the recent years. The location is the first advantage because China has over 560 million users of internet spending over 20 hours online a week. China is the biggest internet market globally (Bhasin, 2016). This is twice the size of internet users in United States of America. China is gradually shifting the traditional retailing in favor of latest trend of e-tailing. The good relationship with the government of China has enabled it to carry its operations so well in the market. For example, Alibaba Group was among the companies selected by the government of China to join the Internet banking. This is a huge opportunity especially where banks are state owned (Shiying & Avery, 2009). The cost cutting associated with the huge volume of sales. For example, Tmall and Taobao accounted for over 50 percent of all the Chinese delivered parcels. Tmall’s and Taobao’s combined transaction volume in 2012 was about one trillion yuan. This figure was more than eBay and Amazon transaction volumes combined.

A highly skilled and experienced staff, recruited from companies such as Disney, sustained this new vision. The 20-year average business experience in management that the staff presented was a good reason why eBay was and still is on an ascending trend (why eBay is thriving will be discussed in detail in the report.)

The Alibaba group has thrived in the Chinese e-commerce sector from its inception in 1998. They currently account for over 70% of online shopping in China and delivered annual revenues of $636 million in the 12month period ending June 2009 (case p1-2). Alibaba’s successes are due to multiple factors that have allowed them to create corporate advantage, and thus establish market leadership in China (Case p1). The configuration and coordination of Alibaba’s

The continuous development of Internet leads to the growth of e-commerce. The electronic commerce is growing constantly due to the continuously increasing number of mobile and online users in the market, primarily the emerging markets. Besides that, the development of the Information Technology (IT), such as the advance of paying processes and the improvements of shipping method also the main reason to cause the growth of electronic commerce (John Ingham, 2015). Most consumers accept e-commerce as their feasible alternative in the purchase of goods and

Founded just before the turn of the millennium in Hangzhou, China, Alibaba Group has to date become the largest online retail website worldwide in the planet, its total transactions surpassing the sum of both Amazon and eBay’s (Erickson, 2013). The report explains its business and operation model and market strategy, before moving to explore the reasons for Alibaba Group’s success such as its established market share in the large market of Mainland China and its efforts to promote the perception of the reliability and security of e-commerce. Comprising of its future plans in logistics improvement, expansion into developing nations, integration with social networks, venture into mobile