Working Note

Leveraging eBay’s Global Strategy and Organization

eBay management planned to leverage its worldwide capabilities in order to compete against home-grown rivals in China.

* Immediately eBay augmented EachNet’s leadership to facilitate integration into eBay’s global strategy and organization.

* eBay corporate changed the Chinese operation in several ways to align it with eBay’s worldwide systems. eBay China’s platform was changed significantly in terms of listing categorization, interface styles, and technologies. To facilitate maintenance across the whole global platform, eBay China’s servers were moved from China to Silicon Valley, and maintenance of the website was primarily carried out by engineers at eBay’s California headquarters. Similarly, eBay China’s pricing was changed to conform to that of the parent company.

* www.ebay.com.cn was launched simultaneously We're mainly interested in making sure that we structure this to have long-term sustainability. We have the essential eBay formula― insertion fees, final-value fees, and features fees―though at a lower level.”28In September 2004, over a year after eBay completed the acquisition, eBay China was officially moved onto eBay’s global platform, and a mirror site

* As it integrated the Chinese operation into its global platform, eBay corporate also changed the structure of leadership in its Asian operations. In August 2004, eBay created a regional layer between eBay headquarters and eBay China, to be known as eBay Asia.

Taobao Rivals eBay China

During the period from late 2002 to early 2003, when eBay was acquiring EachNet, one man was particularly concerned with the development, and quietly evaluated the progress of eBay.

* Very different from other Internet entrepreneurs in China, who normally had a strong technical background and graduated from an elite university, Ma attended a local college in Hangzhou and taught English at another local college after graduation.

* On his...