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Ebay Case Study

In: Business and Management

Submitted By tha1krazy
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If someone wanted to sell or buy an item, they would most likely visit one of their favorite e-commerce website, most notably eBay. eBay.com has become the world’s largest online marketplace, that enable individuals to buy and sell practically anything including books, antiques, collectibles, electronics, home furnishing, sporting goods and memorabilia, and move and DVDs to nearly every country on earth (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). It operates on a global scale, with its headquarter located in San Jose, California. It was founded in September 1995 by Pierre Omidyar as one of his hobbies, yet to realize he developed a revolutionary new ecommerce model (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). eBay did not follow in the same stepping stones as other ecommerce did at the time. At the time of its establishment, eBay acted as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, unlike others who focused on selling goods and services (Trites &Bortiz, 2003). Since it first started, eBay has achieved numerous milestones for its time duration in the business. It has an established community consisting of tens of millions of registered from every corner of the earth (eBay, 2013). In addition, eBay is globalized to operate localized sites in over 20 countries, including Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and India (eBay, 2013). eBay was successful during its establishment due to the fact it was the ‘right idea at the right time’, combining the business of auctioning through the means of the internet. Due to its business structure as an intermediary between buyers and sellers, it did not have to occur any infrastructure cost or write off any inventories. As the company started to grow at immense rate during a short period of time, it also needed to expand itself in order to operate. eBay accomplished this by improving on their initial website from eBay version 1 to version 2 to version 3.

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