Ebay

eBay started out as a host for an online marketplace intended for individuals, groups, or organizations who are interested in putting up their products or goods for sale. (Gomes-Casseres, 2001) It was established by Pierre Omidyar in September 1995. The dimensions of eBay was pretty simple from the start – a peer-to-peer structure – which allows trading of various things, ranging from books to CDs and DVDs, clothes, home appliances, digital electronics or gadgets, jewelry, and such.

From the time it was introduced, eBay has experienced incredible success as the percentage of sales kept increasing as the years went by. However, like any other business organizations, eBay reached a point where it needed to expand and develop its platform in order to lure more users and investors, and incorporate recent models or frameworks in business in order to cope with current business and marketing trends, particularly globalization, and compete with other online institutions that implement the same structure or platform.

 With varied competition present in the virtual community, eBay’s success is attributed to its competitive advantages or core competencies. The ability of eBay to incorporate information systems and state of the art technologies in developing and expanding its platform has remained to be the company’s advantage over its competitors.

The company is extremely particular about providing information to individuals, groups or organizations that are unable to determine what features or characteristics to look for when aiming to purchase products or goods from the online marketplace, or how to price the items appropriately when attempting to sell products or goods to other online users. (Chen, 2005)

The information system employed by eBay constitutes various technologies that are primarily directed toward customer service for information sufficiency. eBay believes that the availability and the depth and coverage of information provided for customers allow them to become engaged in realizing the goals and objectives of the company.

Online support is one of the primary priorities of eBay ranging from online forums or conferences through chat rooms and message boards, to the proper and timely responses to inquiries through FAQs and contact information to customer service representatives or managers, and such. (Chen, 2005) Overall, the strategy of eBay to prioritize information sufficiency to address customer needs and demands allows it to obtain competitive advantage by gaining the respect and trust of its constituents and developing market efficiency, through the information system that it employs.

Overall, the business strategy of eBay has not changed over the years. Although there have been various changes since the advent of globalization, it still remains to prioritize information sufficiency as an important factor in developing the organization. Information sufficiency even became more significant due to globalization, as more and more people become involved with the company.

Although it eBay looked into the possibility of international expansion through adaptation and acquisition, the primary strategy of the company still capitalized on its major value chain. Since the primary sources of income for eBay were the fees obtained from the sales or transactions, it aimed to increase these fees to obtain more revenue or income. In general, eBay still employs the same strategic design or dimension when it started. (Collier, 2006)

 The decision of eBay to configure and coordinate its value chain was motivated by the increase profit or revenue that it would gain by attracting more sellers to establish their online markets through eBay as the payment or commission obtained from the finals sales is one of the primary sources of income for the company.

In addition, the role of globalization has fueled the configuration of the value chain to prioritize the involvement of customers from all over the world and the establishment of an online community that communes through eBay as a host. As eBay has reported, 100 percent of its income is obtained from the fees obtained from the sales, and capitalizing on its source of income was the greatest motivation for the configuration or coordination of its value chain. (Mascarenhas, Kesavan & Bernacchi, 2004)

The structure of eBay’s value chain is perceived as real, but at the same time, the practical or technical aspect of the company’s business processes and operations are fueled by its virtual dimensions. Since the life and blood of the company are the online users who register under the terms and conditions of the company to either establish their online markets or to purchase products from the various offerings that are peddled through eBay, and the products that are sold through eBay’s platform, its value chain may be partly be considered as real or physical.

However, considering the genuine or primary platform and value chain of the company, which is the presence of the information systems, it may now be then considered as virtual, for without the online dimensions and the established platform of eBay in the virtual community, the company will cease to exist. (Rayport & Sviokla, 1996)

As the company faces the various challenges posed by the corporate landscape in the twenty-first century, it will become difficult for eBay to handle or surpass them since there are many issues and concerns that it has overlooked for the past years due to its concentration on its current value chain or priorities.

Challenges presented include the technical or digital aspect of the online platform on which eBay depends for the sales and transactions and the maintenance of its valued information system, multiculturalism, perceptions and beliefs of e-commerce, ethical and legal considerations, as well as international relations.

Since eBay has proved to lack experience and knowledge about these issues due to its consistent prioritization of information systems, this only implies that it has to work doubly hard to restructure the goals and objectives of the company, as well as the processes and operations that it currently implements in order to cope fairly well with all the challenges and requirements that it has to meet if it expects to survive in the coming years, heralded by so many changes due to technology and globalization.

References

Chen, E. T. (2005). Leveraging for a Competitive Advantage – Case of eBay. Retrieved

            December 17, 2008, from JCIS Online. Website: http://www.jcis-online.org/iis/2005_IIS/PDFs/Chen.pdf

Collier, M. (2006). Reworking Your eBay Stores Strategy. Retrieved December 17,

           2008, from Entrepreneur.com, Inc. Website: http://www.entrepreneur.com/ebusiness/ebaycenter/ebaycolumnist/article165922.html

Gomes-Casseres, B. (2001). The History of eBay. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from

Mascarenhas, O. A., Kesavan, R. & Bernacchi, M. (2004). Customer Value-Chain

            Involvement for Co-Creating Customer Delight. Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 21, No. 7. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from Emerald. Website: http://www.huizenga.nova.edu/5017/ReadingList/Mascarenhas_Kesavan_Benacchi%20-%20Customer%20value-chain%20involvement%20for%20co-creating%20customer%20delight.pdf

Rayport, J. F. & Sviokla, J. J. (1996). Exploiting the Virtual Value Chain. The McKinsley

            Quarterly, No. 1. Retrieved December 17, 2008, from:             http://www.andreabiancalani.it/virtual.pdf

The Internet has become an effective marketplace for most businesses today. Its many applications including communication, transaction and interaction resulted organisations putting up their websites to utilise such applications. Such applications of the internet led to the conceptualisation of the term e-business which has affected almost all areas of business. E-business can be simply defined as doing business electronically (Kalakota & Robinson, 2000) but it has integrated the communication and the value chain of the business, two of the most important aspects of the business.

Due to its many applications, there are actually organisations whose business models are designed specifically for e-business. That is, the core competency of their business is the effective utilisation of the internet using appropriate resources and effective strategies. One of these organisations is the very popular eBay. eBay has been the epitome of every e-business today due to its success in the dot com world and has been the study of many business organisations from which they can get some ideas on how to make their e-businesses a success.

Company Background eBay Inc. , the world’s most popular and by far the largest auction company has been around since 1995. It was founded as a sole proprietorship by Pierre Omidyar, a computer science graduate of Tufts University. He worked for Claris, Innovative Design and General Magic before creating eBay. eBay was conceptualised when his wife then fiancee was interested with Pez dispenser collection and was frustrated that the buy and trade of such collectors’ item is limited by geographical considerations (Krishnamurthy, 2004).

Having a programming background, Omidyar saw the potential of the Internet and created the program for the website that will help his girlfriend sell her collections, calling it AuctionWeb. A section of the website called Echo Bay Technology Group was for some consulting work to which the site was named after. But another company had registered echobay. com thus he chose eBay (Krishnamurthy, 2004). Having a good background with IT, he himself developed the program and the web design of his business utilising the C++ program.

When he met Jeff Skoll, an MBA graduate from Stanford Business School, they became business partners; Omidyar’s programming experience was balanced by Skoll’s business skills (Anonymous, 2007). Skoll wrote the business plan for the company they called eBay Inc. Initially, trading on the site was free but as the site generated traffic, it moved to a more expensive Internet Service Provider and began charging customers at 5% of the sale price for items $25 and 2.

5% for items more than $25 (Krishnamurthy, 2004). In 1997, the business moved from being an accidental company to becoming a real company due to the tremendous growth it experienced. In that same year, the company officially became eBay and brought in its CEO Meg Whitman, a Harvard Business graduate who was the general manager of Hasbro’s Preschool Division, an executive of the Walt Disney, Proctor & Gamble, and the president and CEO of FTD to help the company grow.

Omidyar, Skoll, Whitman and another person in name of Mary Lou Song came up with the idea of setting up a place where people could buy, sell and trade their items; they set the rules and provided a safe place in which to do business with banks and moneylenders helping with financial services (Anonymous, 2007). eBay is basically an online community used by buyers and sellers for the exchange of goods from memorabilia, to collectors’ items such as coins, computers, stamps and various items that can be sold usually those that are hard to find in regular stores.

Figure 1 shows the breakdown of gross merchandise listed on eBay. Big companies also began trading and eBay is now considered as the world’s biggest used car dealer (Maney, 2005). Sellers list items for sale and buyers bid on those items. Since it is based online and the service is fully automated, trading happens 24 hours a day, providing the convenience of online shopping to customers. Over the years since its foundation, eBay experienced tremendous growth.

E-Commerce refers to the buying and selling of products and services over electronic systems like the internet and other computer networks. This system depends on technologies like electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, internet marketing, online transactions, electronic data interchange and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is divided into three major categories which include; Consumer to consumer: electronic commerce which involves consumers selling directly to consumers.

Like eBay (the giant web auction site) which allows people to sell their goods to other consumers by auctioning the products off to the highest bidder. Business to consumer: electronic commerce involves retailing products and services to individual shoppers. Like Noble. com which sells books, software and music to individual consumers. Business to business: electronic commerce refers to the selling of goods and services among businesses. For example, Milpro. com (web site) for selling cutting tools and grinding wheels to small businesses.

There are various ways through which electronic commerce payments are made and these include; Credit cards are a bank issued card that allows people to purchase goods or services from a merchant on credit. This type of system is commonly used in the USA and UK where 95 percent of the population uses online payments. A digital wallet is a soft ware application, usually for smart phones that serve as an electronic version of a physical wallet. This type of payment securely stores credit card and the owners’ identification information which also provides the information at the electronic commerce site’s checkout counters.

Digital credit card payment systems are those equipped with miniature computer that creates a new credit card number each time the owner makes a purchase. In this case, owners must also use personal identification number similar to those used with debit cards to complete a transaction. Digital checking payment system like Western union and Money gram are encrypted with a digital signature that can be verified and used for payments in electronic commerce and this is more useful in business to business electronic commerce.

A smart card is a plastic card with same size like that of a credit card that stores information and can also store health records and identification data like telephone numbers. All these electronic commerce payment systems are more common and advanced in the western world like UK, USA, German, Canada and a few African countries like South Africa, Nigeria and some North African countries where businesses are higher advanced and still boosting.

The following are the importance of electronic commerce in modern business across the globe; Electronic web pages provide vendors with the option of communicating with their customers, dealing with their problems and assisting them in the future which factor has enabled companies to build stronger reputation in the market places and an a good example of this is DELL computer company which coordinates directly with its customers without the presence of third parties.

Intelligent ideas in the field of electronic commerce are also acting as innovative ways to develop and attractive online shopping platforms which factor is improving the standards of online markets like eBay ( the giant web auction site) and Noble. com (which sells books and movies to individuals. For electronic commerce based merchants like DELL computer company, eBay ( the giant web auction company and Noble. com (which sells movies and books to individuals), their stores are open 24*7 which factor enables customers to browse, order and buy the products any time and any where.

Electronic commerce is user friendly and easy to maintain in a way that a person having no knowledge about programming can also edit manage and add content on his or her electronic commerce store which factor has created a wide range of products online hence giving customers a chance to choose from the variety of products on the various web sites.

Electronic commerce also helps to create interactive web stores where users can look at the products, their descriptions and order for them online through shopping cart and they can use the various options like credit cards, visa cards, digital wallet and smart cards which factor reduces the labor cost and hence vendors are able to make branded products available at lower prices and hence a wider market.

Electronic commerce has also reduced on the cost of marketing and promotions in form of advertisements for many companies using electronic commerce like DELL and eBay whereby, various products on the market are always uploaded on the different web sites which factor enables such companies to save and invest more in their respective businesses and hence boosting business in the modern globe.

Electronic commerce saves time of both the vendors and the customer in a way that, the vendor only needs a well designed and attractive web sites where his or her products are to be uploaded and its upon the customers to browse and see what they really need and then just order directly from the vendors. With the introduction of multiple payment systems, electronic commerce has greatly improved on the business standards in different countries like UK and USA where the customer are able to buy the available products internationally and this has greatly improved on the various businesses strategies across the globe.

Electronic commerce has also minimized on the cost of space occupied by the various products in terms of rent on the side of the vendors and in this case, the vendors only require a small office and a computer to do all their transactions whereby whenever a product is ordered for by the customers, the vendor only has to contact the industry and in a very limited time, a product is delivered which in fact encourages saving by the vendor.

Electronic commerce also enables the customers to compare prices of the various products and this is a way that many sites claim to offer customers the best prices and information from these sites can be used to compare prices by the customers. Electronic commerce also gives customers a chance to return defective goods where by most of these e-commerce web sites have a ‘returns police’ and it is always advisable that customers read this before purchasing a product from the vendors.

And this gives customers a right to return such products which factor is totally different from buying products in our common shop where the policy is ‘goods once bought cannot be returned. CONCLUSION; In conclusion, without any obstacles, electronic commerce will probably continue to mature in the global market and eventually, it will become an essential business plan for most companies in order to survive and stay competitive in the ever changing market. And the appearance of E-commerce as a pioneer has opened up windows of opportunities for a variety of other companies and investors.

1. Should energy be subsidized by government?

The Philippines is now the most expensive energy provider in Asia. This means that our electricity, natural gas (LPG) and even our oil prices are much expensive than our neighboring countries. So should energy be subsidized by the government? The answer is no. The country has a national deficit which means that we have to borrow money from bank like WBO to help pay what is needed to run our government projects, department and government programs. If we borrow more money, this will increase our national deficit which is not practical.

Energy subsidies leave the little to no effect on net domestic production other than to help prevent further declines. However our government should lead the way to providing or even providing renewable energy like solar and wind. Subsidies and support can encourage producers to bring new technologies to market until manufacturers are able to produce the new technology in large quantities at costs competitive with established commercial technologies.

2. Perfect competition under Ebay: A fact or factoid Ebay is in fact practicing perfect competition. For these following reasons: * Many buyers/Many Sellers – Ebay has this for some goods that are for sale, but often the items on ebay are either one-of-a-kind, or only sold by one seller, which makes it not competitive. * Low-Entry/Exit Barriers — Ebay requires sellers to set up accounts and register personal information, but it is still a fairly low entry barrier. There are virtually zero exit barriers.

* Perfect Information – (Prices are assumed to be known to all consumers and producers) Ebay does not have this as the final sale price is not known until the sale is completed. People may see an item listed at $10, decide they are willing to spend $11, only to discover that the product is now listed at $12, through auto-bidding.

* Transactions are Costless – Ebay charges sellers for each sale.

* Firms Aim to Maximize Profits – On Ebay, firms do not always sell where marginal cost equals marginal benefit, and hence do not maximize their profits.

* Homogeneous Products — (The characteristics of any given market good or service do not vary across suppliers) The Ebay feedback system can show you that not all sellers provide the same quality goods and service.

3. U.S financial crisis: Impact on emerging market.

The financial crisis in the U.S. started when the owners of houses that were bought using credit and loans from banks didn’t or wasn’t able to pay the housing companies and housing developers. They also didn’t or wasn’t able to pay back all the loans they got. The banking and housing companies suddenly collapse because they weren’t able to recover the money owed to them.

This has great effect on emerging markets because the financial institutions collapse they suddenly tighten their credit requirements. This made it hard for people to borrow money and use it as capital for their business catering on emerging markets. Emerging markets have turned in a remarkable growth performance in this decade but it is still being affected by worsening financial crisis of the world. Many projects have been halted because of this crisis. Prices of commodities are increasing affecting how a country grow economically.

Competitive advantage is the state in which an organization is able to deliver its goods and services to the consumers against their competitors in the market (Porter, M. E. 2004, pg 154). There are two main types of the competitive advantages; these are the cost advantages and the differentiation advantages. With this, different organization incorporates different competitive advantages into their system so as to enhance their level to sustain their competitors. In the eBay organization, their nature of competitive advantage has combined both the cost advantage and the differentiation advantage.

Differentiation advantage is whereby the organization is able to deliver their goods and services that exceed that delivered by their competitors. While the cost advantage is where by the company offer their services and goods at a lower price as compared to that offered by the competitors (Porter, M. E. 2004, pg 154). The competitors of the eBay comprise of the amazon. com and the yahoo internet corporations. Inn this, the organization have been able to deliver very superior value creation services and goods to their customers worldwide.

For the organization to attain all these, they have categorized their online auctions into three major parts in which they ensure that they offer the services required by the client in a unique way compared to that offered by their competitors. These categories consist of; business to business auctions, business to customers auctions and the person to person auctions. Within these categories, the organization has managed to attend to their needs better compared to that offered to them by their competitors. To enhance the use of the differentiation advantage over their competitors, eBay have incorporated entertainment in their services.

This has been the main sell point of their services as many of their client go for their services because of the entertainment they get from them. This has been cleared attained by the use of the design school of which enables the organization to be able to consider the value of the external forces that influences their growth (Lamb, C. W. , Hair, J. F. & McDaniel, C. 2003, pp 36). This is also because by the fact that, the organization has continuously been in the transition of their services to maintain their top position in the market; this gives them the provision to conceptualize on their strategies in place.

SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE (E-BAY) Sustainable competitive advantage is only attained by an organization when their value making processes and arrangement have not been able to be replicated or reproduced by other companies of the same services (Porter, M. E. 2004, pg 154). This allows the organization to be unique in its own nature when compared with the rest of the competitors in the market. In this case, the eBay organization has attained the sustainable competitive advantage in the market. This is seen when they have continually seek new opportunities in changing condition within the market.

This is clearly seen when the organization wanted to facilitate the transaction of business for its buyers and seller in the year 1998, they had to adjust their system to such a manner that they could be able to offer the person to person mode of service. This allowed the organization to attain the need of every customer at their website. As the competition in the market increased, they began to seek for growth opportunities from the international markets to enable them create a global trading community.

By this time, there were no facilities created for that, so the organization began to stipulate for the ways in which they could be able to meet the needs of the community members (Wickham, P. A. 2006, pg 493). In this they came up with three main strategies that they used. In doing all these, they are trying to sustain their competitive advantage. They can also be justified to have attained the sustainable competitive advantage as the type of the goods and services that they offer can not be compared to the ones offered by their competitors (Jensen, B. 2000, pg103).

They are said to be competitively superior to the competitors as regard to their services, some of these superiority include; the eBay company assists buyers and sellers meeting, switching information and performing the operation, they allow the clients to circumvent traditional mediators and trade directly, thus reducing their cost, they provide their client with global services, wide variation and broader base of participants, the eBay company operates 24 hour in a day thus enabling their client to be attended to at any given time and lastly, they foster a sense of togetherness among the individuals with communal interest.

The capacity of the eBay company to be able to offer all the above list services to their client, have made it possible for them to be sustainable competitive advantageous over its competitor (Hill, C. W. L. & Gareth R. Jones, G. R. 2006, pg 191). This is because; the competitors have in the long run been unable to attain their standard.

Some of the competitor’s limitations specialized in includes; they offered limited variety of the services, they mode of charges on their clients are too high and then they tend to have less information for the clients concerning their services and goods. Through these limitations, the eBay company strengthened its services to be the hero in the market.

It all started in 2002, just as when almost every American company is racing themselves up to enter the Asian markets particularly in China and in South Korea. Driven primarily by the Asian country’s booming economy, coupled with low labor costs and liberalized policies towards capitalism, most companies sought out after the opportunity that China promises. Among these is China’s growing online auction industry which holds up $1 Billion by the time and is projected to rise in the coming years (Malik, 2006). What is more fascinating about this is the fact that only 100 million Chinese are hooked up online from about a total population of 1.

2 Billion, more than the market in other nations. Already, China already ranked second to the United States in online usage and is projected to double within five years. For a Silicon Valley company like eBay, it only transcends to one thing: profits (Powell, 2005). This was further prompted by the 1999 Chinese policy of loosening their Internet shutdown policies. The Chinese government saw the importance of the medium in spreading their propaganda to the world and thereby overturning their previous policy and started to open up and the rest they say was wild corporate chaos. This became a precursor for eBay, an online auction giant in the United States, to join in the Chinese bandwagon and seek out to penetrate the Chinese market and get a hold of growing opportunities (Malik, 2006). eBay actually has a lot of things to back up the company decision in 2002. It has a stronghold of shares in the United States and a promising operating capital of up to $13. 49 Billion (“eBay, Inc. at a Glance”, 2006). Certainly, the company is up to the challenge. They started it by acquiring the minority shares of EachNet, a Shanghai-based company that is engaged in consumer-to-consumer online trading in 2003.

A year later, they managed to buy out the company for about $100 million dollars. Strict Competition Optimism continued on for E-Bay in their acquisition of the Chinese company in their goal for supremacy on the Chinese online market (Doebele, 2005). This however was short-lived after Jack Ma, considered to be the “Grandfather of the Chinese Online Industry” and CEO of Alibaba. com, challenged eBay by putting up Taobao. com in 2004 which caters pretty much the same with what eBay is banking at consumer-to-consumer online trading. An offshoot of Alibaba Holdings, Taobao promises to give eBay a run for its money in the Chinese market. This was followed by a decision by yahoo. com to buy shares in Taobao to also penetrate the market in 2005 (Munariz, 2005). While this happens, eBay likewise strengthened its position in the Chinese market and was able to gain about 53% of the high volatile market, slightly higher than Taobao’s 49% market share. Taobao’s advantage over eBay was its free services local knowledge of Chinese and Korean markets.

eBay started listing several consumer products for a minimal posting fee and was able to bank in about $3. 3 Billion in profits compared to Taobao’s $68 million. But it was surprising though to note that with such a small difference, eBay announced its decision to sell 51% of their company shares to TOM Online, also a Chinese company in late 2006 (“eBay to Downgrade presence in China”, 2006). The move was seen by several industry analysts as a sign of ceding to competition right before it even started. eBay can’t afford to lose in China much less from competition.nFor instance, it has already invested more than $100 million dollars in order to develop the online market. Even Chinese analysts are considering eBay as a revolutionary company that helped shape e-commerce in the Asian country. eBay even pulled out of Japan after yahoo. com beat them out in the industry in order to focus more on the much larger opportunities of the Chinese online market. Right now, with the decisions that eBay is taking, it seems that the opportunities it first saw from China weren’t as good as it was in the United States after all. Lack of Market Knowledge. eBay sort of failure in the Chinese and Korean market can directly be attributed to the lack of local market knowledge which is important in business transactions overseas. With a wild economy like China’s, an opportunity is tantamount to risks that the company has to overcome and this heavily requires local knowledge. On the other hand, a heavy sense of nationalism from the part of the Koreans contributed to the demise of E-Bay in Asia. eBay committed this mistake after replacing much of the local Chinese executives in EachNet with mostly foreigners who have not much idea of the Chinese culture after the buy-out in 2004 (Carlson, 2006).

This became detrimental in the coming years for eBay as it wasn’t able to sustain the market lead it initially had as compared to Taobao who is a local player in the first place (Hafner, 2006). eBay answered this by selling its shares to TOM Online in order to “customize” their market position in China (Charny, 2007). But it was at all different from what other people see of the company’s performance. Although eBay had a steady market share of 53%, this rate was still far from expectations and eBay is paying more in investments than gaining profits (Hof, 2006). So in the end, analysts say that the recent move for eBay to tie up with TOM Online is as good as saying, “We surrender”.

References:

1. Carlson, N. (2006).
2. eBay to Scuttle Chinese Site. Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://asia. internet. com/news/article. php/3650036 Charny, B. (2007).
3. eBay Suffers Another Setback in China [Electronic Version]. MarketWatch. Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ebays-china-efforts-suffer-another/story.aspx? guid=%7B5F670E9A-BDB1-47EA-8E48-566B12AF27B8%7D.
4. Doebele, J. (2005). Standing Up to eBay [Electronic Version]. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://members.Forbes.com/forbes/2005/0418/050. HTML. eBay to Downgrade’s presence in China [Electronic (2006). Version].
5. Manila Times. Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://202. 124. 128. 10/national/2006/dec/21/yehey/techtimes/20061221tech1. html. eBay, Inc. at a Glance. (2006). Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://finapps. forbes. com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance. jsp? tkr=EBAY Hafner, K. (2006).
6. eBay is Expected to Close Its Auction Site in China [Electronic Version]. Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/technology/19ebay.html/ex=1324184400&en=d45cf22a784c63dd&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Hof, R. (2006). More Trouble for eBay in China [Electronic Version].
7. http://www. businessweek. com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2006/09/more_trouble_fo. html. Kramer, S. (2006). EBay Rethinks China [Electronic Version]. Technologies Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://www. paidcontent.
8. Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://gigaom. com/2006/07/24/ebays-china-syndrome/. Munariz, R. A. (2005).
9. Is eBay Dead in China? Retrieved April 12, 2007, from http://www. fool. com/investing/high-growth/2005/08/18/is-ebay-dead-in-china. aspx Powell, B. (2005).
10. Why eBay Must Win in China [Electronic Version]. Time Magazine. Retrieved April 12 2007 from http://www. time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,501050829-1096554,00. html.

The brand, eBay, was founded on September 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll. He envisioned eBay to be a marketplace that will serve as the venue of selling goods and services. In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder took in Meg Whitman and the three of them bought in experienced professionals and transformed eBay to what it is today, a company and a brand that focus on connecting people from all over the globe. For them, the focus of eBay was not just selling to people, but instead, making valuable interactions. Basically, eBay offers a service.

It gives sellers the ability to list their products for sell in a safe and high-traffic environment for the entire online world to see. It allows buyers to have access to a one-stop online shop where they can securely bid on their desired items and eventually purchase them. The key features of eBay’s service offerings are security, accessibility, and availability. The online store is accessible and available to anyone who has internet connection. eBay’s highly experienced staff makes sure that transactions are done in a safe and secure web environment. When it comes to the price, there is no price to pay to buy on eBay!

However, if you want to put your items for sale and start on auction, you have the choice to do so as a Power Seller and certain charges may apply. The price strategy is very effective because as a consumer, you get to enjoy the services for free. But if you want something extra, you then need to start paying for it. This price scheme is effective because consumers will really understand that if they want premium service, they need to pay for it. This is unlike other online companies and websites that require you to pay upfront without even offering any service first. As per distribution, eBay is available to almost everyone.

All you need is a computer and internet connection and you can access it. The marketing mix of eBay is based on a person-to-person trading environment online. The brand is promoted using e-marketing methods such as key working, banner advertisements, and other online ads. The brand is positioned to cater to the internet-savvy market. At first, almost anything of value can be sold on eBay. However, by forging partnerships with famous brands such as Disney, Sun, and GM, more upscale products are now available on eBay. The brand is positioned cleverly that it can cater to the upscale and lower markets.

The upscale products sold on eBay do not alienate the lower market segments; it even helps promote the brand and puts it in a premium, quality position! Right now, the room for improvement can be dictated by advancements in technology. Scientists and information management experts must be up to date to the latest innovations to keep eBay safe and secure. If there is new software for online security, eBay must adapt it immediately to make sure that all transactions done on the site are safe. Sources: http://www. cs. brandeis. edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history. html