Ebay

Question 1: Evaluate eBay’s marketing strategies to date. What changes, if any, would you suggest?

Since 1995, eBay has transformed consumer to consumer market by connecting buyers and sellers through World Wide Web (www). It is through this that the world has become a global village which has helped eBay and many other organizations to reach a large audience across the national borders.

One of the successful strategies of eBay was to introduce online auction sites that facilitated many potential buyers and sellers to exchange goods and services of significant value. The auction websites were different from the traditional auction services in many ways; the founder of eBay initially started with this as a free service. But due to the increase in the traffic the founder thought to charge a small fee from the participants. E-commerce is an emerging phenomenon in the developed countries like United States. Such auctions site that doesn’t require a physical place has helped many buyers and sellers to interact on mutual terms. Moreover, these auctions sites also provided a win-win situation to attract many sellers and buyers.

The advancement in the technology has forced many organizations like eBay to change their marketing strategies to survive in the competitive environment. We believe, eBay has shown tremendous growth since its inception and they had been able to compete with the changing trends. For example, a separate website was created to address the buyer-seller issues related to automobile. Some of the other strategies they adapted included; introduction of new payment system through the purchase of PayPal and the creation of a new venture with the US postal service. Moreover, the increasing direct competition from Amazon.com led eBay to focus on a new product market of mobile phones and tablets. eBay till date have developed many mobile phone applications to cater to this new fragmented market segment.

We believe eBay should also emphasis on their...