2. Company Profile
eBay is an American multinational corporation and e-commerce company, providing consumer-
to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales services via the Internet. It is headquartered in San
Jose, California. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995, and became a notable success
story of the dot-com bubble. Today it is a multibillion-dollar business with operations localized
in over 30 countries.[5]
The company manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and
businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide. In addition to its
auction-style sales, the website has since expanded to include "Buy It Now" shopping; online
classified advertisements (via Kijiji or eBay Classifieds); online event ticket trading ; and other
services. It previously offered online money transfers (via PayPal),[6] which was a wholly
owned subsidiary of eBay from 2002 until 2015. The website is free to use for buyers, but sellers
are charged fees for listing items and again when those items are sold
Type of business Public
Type of site eCommerce, online auction hosting
Founded 3 September 1995(as Auction Web)
Headquarters United states
Founder PIierre Omidyar
Key people Thomas J. Tierney(Chairman)
Devin Wenig(CEO)
Revenue US$8.59billion (2015)
Employees 34,600 (2015)
Subsidiaries eBayClassifieds, Kijiji, iBazaar,GittiGidiyor,
Gumtree, Stubhub, Half.com
Acquisitions StubHub, Skype, Craigslist, GittiGidiyor,
PayPal, Corrigon
Slogans “World’s online marketplace”
“Connecting buyers and sellers globally”
“Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay”
“Buy it, sell it, love it”
“Buy it new, Buy it now”
“When it’s on your mind, it”s on eBay”
Website Ebay.com
3. Promoters Background
Born in Paris in 1967, Omidyar moved to the city of Baltimore, Maryland as his physician father
accepted a medical residency at JohnsHopkinsUniversityMedical Center. He had an interest in
computers as a teenager, preferring playing on the high school's computers rather than attending
PE class. The principal of the school saw Omidyar's potential and rather than punishing him for
skipping gym, hired him to handle programming and printing library catalog cards for a
whopping $6 an hour.
Omidyar continued on the path to attend Tufts University and pursue a bachelor's degree.
While studying there, he developed a program for Apple Macintosh for memory management.
By 1991, Omidyar and 3 other students created a company to develop programs for pen-
computing. He was wise enough to create a rudimentary e-commerce platform he named eShop.
Pen-computing didn't take off but the concept for e-commerce caught Microsoft's eye, and
they bought the company from Omidyar.
After that debacle, Omidyar moved on to designing web pages. His girlfriend, who later became
his wife, who was a Pez dispenser enthusiast and collector. She was frustrated with the internet
and her search to find other Pez collectors. In an effort to help his girlfriend, Omidyar created an
area on his website for her to reach out to other Pez collectors and network with other like
minded people in the collector space.
eBay, or as it was first known, Electronic Bay, began on Labor Day 1995. It was quite
rudimentary by today's standards with no guarantees, no fees, no third party interaction to
moderate disputes, and no payment platform. Omidyar and his girlfriend where shocked to see
that a variety of collectibles, used items, and random stuff began appearing on the site. Within
five months, eBay outgrew Omidyar's personal account and had to be moved to a business
platform and members were charged a small fee to list on the site. eBay continued to grow by
leaps and bounds and Omidyar actually told the New York Times in an interview that "so many
checks were piling up at my door that I had to hire help to open them all." He is now worth
nearly 8 billion dollars.
Business Model:
The Business Model of eBay is an online person-to-person trading community on the Internet,
using the World Wide Web. Buyers and sellers are brought together in a manner where sellers
are permitted to list items for sale and buyers to bid on items of interest, also both sellers and
buyers are able to browse through all listed items. The items are arranged by topics, where each
type of auction has its own category.
eBay has both streamlined and globalized traditional person-to-person trading, which has
traditionally been conducted through such forms as garage sales, collectibles shows, flea markets
4. and more, with their web interface. This enables easy searching for buyers and enables the sellers
to immediately list an item for sale within minutes of registering.
Browsing and bidding on auctions does not incur any charges, but sellers are charged two kinds
of fees. eBay Australia has introduced 30 free auction-style listings per month and there after you
are charged the ‘Insertion Fee’ (conditions apply).
• When an item is listed on eBay a nonrefundable Insertion Fee is charged, which ranges
between 50 cents and $3.00, depending on the listing start price of the item. A fee is charged for
additional listing options to promote the item, such as highlighted or bold listing.
• A Final Value (final sale price) fee is charged at the end of the seller's auction. This fee is 7.9%
of the final sale price, there are other circumstances and exceptions but this is the general figure.
Products of eBay
Although eBay started out as a marketplace for collectors, anything and everything can be and
has been sold on the site, including:
Clothing, shoes, and accessories
Automobiles, boats, RVs, and motorcycles
Electronics
Computers and accessories
Cell phones and accessories
Toys, games, and puzzles
Word War 2 memorabilia
Food, candy, and beverages
Vintage items
Sporting goods
Personalized items
Music, musical instruments, and gear
Wedding supplies
Real Estate
Pet supplies
Tickets and experiences
ComparisionbetweeneBay and Amazon
Ebay Amazon
EBay is an auction house, and the company
simply facilitates the sale of goods between
Amazon is a direct provider of goods, and
customers visiting its site view products that
5. third-party buyers and sellers Amazon maintains as inventory in its large
network of warehouses.
Within an auction model, eBay employs a
wholesale pricing strategy
Amazon operates as a retail outlet, providing
customers with fixed prices on all products
The company is far more seller-oriented than
Amazon. EBay actively invites sellers to
participate in its auction marketplace
Amazon is more buyer-oriented, actively
inviting buyers to visit the site and browse
through and subsequently purchase its own
inventor
Pay- pal Facilitates all its payments
Act as a middlemen Middlemen and also a retailer
Future of eBay
eBay is working on making finding items more “structured.” What that means is that the
company is starting to help shoppers narrow down their search by providing them with
choices. For example, if your search for an iPhone, you’ll see categories for best value,
brand new and more. What you won’t see is a list of every iPhone sold on eBay.
eBay is now thinking more like a retailer instead of a technology site when marketing and
selling the 800 million items that are available through the service.
eBay is also encouraging buyers to post product reviews. Because merchandising is getting
better on eBay, the company is seeing more detailed reviews being posted by customers.
eBay is following in the footsteps of Amazon by giving sellers more tools and data to help
them grow their businesses. Amazon’s Sellers Coach gives sellers data about how quickly
certain items are selling, and points out which items aren’t selling as well.
Uber , the ride sharing giant’s newly debuted delivery service. Instead of recreating a
delivery network, eBay would rather work with Uber. The last thing eBay is planning to do
is to compete with Amazon on shipping.
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