Case analysis on Ebay for an e-business course

Running head : EBAY

Company : eBay

Course Number

Name of Team Members

Date

Executive Summary

eBay is one of the world 's largest and fastest growing online companies Fact is that it consistently ranks at the top of the world 's leading online market retailers . As of 31 December 2007 , eBay had 276 million registered users worldwide , where 83 .2 million of these are active users that accounted for 637 million new listings in their website . As the company is the leader in online retailing industry , eBay faces numerous

threats and challenges that it needs to untangle in for it to remain a profitable company in the future . By delving into Porter 's Five Forces , eBay can assess potential profits that are kept by the industry by determining the relative bargaining power of the firms in the industry and their customers and suppliers . In judging the firms competitive advantage , the SWOT analysis can thresh out weaknesses and emphasize the strengths in to set the goals of eBay to a proactive direction . These helpful strategies will facilitate forecasting eBay 's focus in maintaining its competitive advantage and assess its performance

Introduction

Undeniably , eBay is one of the world 's largest and fastest growing online companies . Fact is that it consistently ranks at the top of the world 's leading online market retailers (See Table 1 . As of 31 December 2007 , eBay had 276 million registered users worldwide , where 83 .2 million of these are active users that accounted for 637 million new listings in their website . Following acquisitions in recent years , the company also owns Half .com (fixed price retail sales , PayPal (online payments , Rent .com (apartment and home rentals , Shopping .com (comparison shopping , Skype (Internet calling , and StubHub (online ticket sales . As of December 2007 , PayPal has 57 .3 million active registered accounts and Skype had 276 .3 million registered users (Fast Facts - eBay , 31 December 2007

Company 2004 2005

eBay 21 .70 22 .30

Google US GMV 7 .70 10 .70

Yahoo US GMV 6 .70 6 .30

Amazon .com 4 .80 4 .70

Office Depot 3 .50 3 .50

Staples 3 .40 3 .50

Wal-Mart 0 .90 1 .00

J .C . Penney 0 .90 0 .90

Williams Sonoma 0 .60 0 .70

Table 1 . Leading e-commerce retailers based on market shares (Bezoza et al , 3 Jan . 2007 ,

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Found in 1995 , eBay was created by a freethinking French national named Pierre Omidyar . He got the concept of an online flea market from his fiancy who collected Pez dispensers . While she was complaining the difficulty of finding other people to trade with in the San Francisco Bay Area , Omidyar , being an e-commerce pioneer , got an idea of creating an Internet auction site could function as the ultimate efficient market . He first called it AuctionWeb ' and the site was supported on the 30-a-month Internet service provider he was hooked up to from home . However , Omidyar 's site domain name was www .ebay .com and since then , eBay was...