The Structural Challenges Of Ebay

Strategic recomendation on International Commercial Strategy for E-Bay: “Alliance, Acquisition or Abandon Strategy” (use QSPM to select strategy) 20%

In a world where trade is increasingly becoming digitalized online, there are new and challenging strategies emerging. This essay aims to analyze and determine these strategies. Considering the example of eBay and Amazon, their business models and their multi-sided platforms, we can compare them to decide which strategies work in this market and how, in the future, they can keep a competitive edge as the market continuously changes. However, as Amazon and eBay have eventually crossed paths in an attempt to expand in the ecommerce market, the question persists whether the market is big enough for both. This essay will look at how eBay and Amazon have evolved their business structure and how changes in

As ubiquitous as eBay is to Americans, it is only a few decades old. eBay was created back in 1995 in San Jose in the living room of founder Pierre Omidyar with his partner Jeff Skoll and it was envisioned to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals (Bjornsson, 2001). Meg Whitman was eventually brought onboard to sustain the success and to help hone a better vision for the company: "that eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things" (Bjornsson, 2001). Part of the widespread success of eBay was founded in the principle that it was not just about auctioning off collectibles, but in upscale markets as well and in creating solid partnerships with brands like GM, Disney and Sun (bradeis.edu). In spite of those tremendous accomplishments, the real success of eBay is in its trading community on the Internet and making it a marketplace that is safe and regulated. "Buyers and sellers are brought together in a manner where sellers are permitted to list items for sale, buyers to bid on items of interest and all eBay users to browse through listed items in a fully automated way. The items are arranged by topics, where each type of auction has its own category" (Bjornsson, 2001). However, despite the massive success that eBay has had in America and in other regions of North America, it has struggled in other marketplaces around the world; something which was indeed a surprise

eBay’s (diversification) expansion modes in China included acquisition and joint venture. Critically evaluate each mode of diversification by identifying the advantages and disadvantages for EBay given the competitive environment within the overall industry and specifically in China.

The e-commerce and online auctions industry is highly fragmented, with a large number of independent players occupying 78.2% of the market. With a low concentration, the two major players, Amazon and eBay, account for only 21.8% of the e-commerce and online auctions market. This indicates low barriers to entry as it not difficult for prospective competitors to establish an online shopping platform. Additionally, there are few specific skills required to participate in the market. Existing operators possess a number of competitive advantages over new entrants, such as reputation of product quality and consumer loyalty, while providing secure payment methods that have been enhanced for years. Furthermore, they also

This report seeks to evaluate the major issue facing eBay with regards to its international strategy. This will be done through the analysis of eBay’s competitive environment using the Porter’s 5 forces and positioning in the industry using the BCG portfolio matrix. Following which, we will proceed to identify the sustainable competitive advantages of eBay using the resource-based view of the firm. The core competence of eBay will also be discussed. Through an overview of the above mentioned analyses, we will propose recommendations to address the problem faced by eBay.

The website eBay is the perfect shopping destination for people who don’t like to leave the comfort of their comfy couch, and for people who enjoy taking advantage of some awesome deals! No matter how big of an online shopping fanatic you consider yourself to be, there is still so much that most people don’t know about this intriguing shopping destination. To find out all that there is to know, all you have to do is explore our article- still from the comfort of your comfy couch! Don’t forget to check back soon for our part two article, where we reveal the top eight lesser-known tricks about eBay!

eBay was founded in 1995 and gained the first mover advantage establishing itself as the first major online auction site. The firm started out offering its' services as an intermediary, facilitating the auction of goods by providing a common platform to be used by buyers and sellers. Today the firm has evolved significantly, operating across the globe with more than 97 million different active users registered (eBay, 2012). In total, the organization facilitates the sale of more than US $2,000 every second of every day (eBay, 2012). The growth of the auction service has died classified the development as well as acquisition strategies to provide services and products that complement the core operations. For example, the acquisition of PayPal, the online payment provider has complimented the ability for consumers to pay for goods

CASE STUDY – EXECUTIVE SUMMARY THE CHALLENGES FACING EBAY IN 2008: TIME FOR A CHANGE IN STRATEGY?

The need for online expansion of eBay activities is largely driven by market dynamics. The rising demand for online services coupled with the

eBay’s competitive strategy is to provide an online auction platform, which, without holding inventory or providing after sale services, connects buyers and sellers in the sale of “collectibles” and unique products and not just commodities. eBay is asset light and by holding no inventory, it has the competitive advantage of being able to scale fast and enter new markets with little capital expenditure. Since eBay is primarily known for its auction services (as opposed to its “Buy-it-now” feature, which is also available), buyers gravitate towards eBay in order to be able to negotiate in a dynamic pricing system. eBay establishes its customer base from a consumer’s desire to make a steal on purchases that they would not find on other websites where goods are offered at a fixed price. This works very well specifically in a lot of the collectible transactions as it is inherently implied that negotiation will be a part of the buying and selling process. In the after sale services realm, the fact that eBay clearly does not get involved shows the strategic thought behind not wanting to get involved in the seller’s end of the transaction. This implies that eBay ends up saving a lot of capital because of not having to come up with shipping and warehousing of goods. eBay’s strategy is coherent because all competitive strategic decisions are heavily based on the online bidding model of providing a platform that

When developing effective business strategies, organizations must thoroughly analyze both the internal and external environments in which they operate (Hill, Jones, & Schilling, 2014, p. 11). This analysis will enable them to pinpoint those elements that threaten their current and future profitability as well as those elements that offer the potential to increase current and future profitability (Hill, et al., 2014, pp. 44-45). The external environment analysis specifically looks at the industry within which a business functions as well as the competitive forces that affect and influence the nature of that industry. One way in which to examine these forces is by utilizing Michael E. Porter’s Five Forces model, which looks at the affect of competitors (both emerging and current), the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, in addition to the threat of substitutes (Hill, et al., 2014, p. 48) on a specific business. This paper sets out to investigate the external environment of eBay, using Porter’s model, to determine how these competitive pressures could potentially affect the online auction site/retailer’s future success.

During the starting years of eBay, Pierre Omidyar adopted a very simple approach into selling, which is, “there is always a market for any product that you are selling, the only challenge is in finding that right target market.”

There have been some negative effects on the economy due to the emergence of e-commerce. It is assumed that the availability of goods online should increase competition but this does not always occur. Reputable companies who have majority control over their industry can sometimes maintain high prices. Further, the Internet allows companies to obtain pricing information from their competitors companies easily and allows them to react immediately to external changes. Company monitoring can also work against consumers. Since other companies can quickly change their price, the original company would not make any extra revenue from increased sales (LaRose, R.,2000). There is also the issue of product differentiation. Increased competition due to ecommerce allows companies to better create products especially for a certain target audience. This makes it difficult for consumers to compare products and lessens the competition and keep prices high.

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