The Success Story Of eBay – An E-Commerce Giant with Giant Leap
Pierre Omidyar is responsible for the website eBay somewhere around 1995. It started in his living room. Since initial days only it meant to be a marketplace where buyers and sellers can do transactions conveniently. After 3 years, Meg Whitman joined Pierre and led the website to a new success level. Later on experienced people from some of the biggest companies also joined to make up a strong team for eBay. Some of the important names are Disney, Pepsico, and so on. Soon, the company started collaborating with a number of bigger brands such as GM, Sun, and so on. The average sale of the items also started increasing per day.
The Dynamic Business Model: eBay
(Source: Brandeis University)
eBay had a model of business that brought both sellers and buyers together at one single platform. Buyers can list their items on the website for sale and the buyers can cross-check these items and bid on them to buy. These items are arranged category-wise so that the buyers can easily search for their required items and can order them. The trading for the sellers is also made quite convenient and hence registering can be done in just a few minutes and they can instantly start listing the items online for the buyers.
It is easy for the buyers to search for the items and order the items. They just have to pay for the item and there are no such other charges for the bidding process. But on the other hand, the sellers do have to pay two different kinds of charges.
- An insertion fee is charged that is nonrefundable. This fee is charged when a seller lists an item on the site. The charges depend on the opening bid of the seller’s item.
- Another fee is charged for additional options that are provided for the item listed such as highlighted listing and so on that can promote the item on the site.
- The last charge is the Final Value that is charged on the final price of the item at the end of the auction.
The buyer and the seller are notified with the help of an email for all the steps of selling or buying the items. The transaction between the seller and the buyer takes place independently apart from the above-mentioned charges charged by the site.