Great idea however didn't stop the traffic and site continued to grow. .
In May of 1996 Omidyar was in desperate need of a partner, so he convinced his buddy Jeff Skoll (Vice Pres. of eBay) to join him. The two men worked out of Pierre's living room until they relocated to Jeff's living room when Pamela Wesley couldn't bare the inconvenience. Little did she know what was coming in the near future. As the business continued to grow the two partners made the decision to move to an office in Sunnyvale, CA. [2] By this time (1998) the idea developed by Omidyar and his partner was so successful that it boasted 2.1 million members and generated $750 million in revenues. [1] .
Omidyar's Strategy .
By the end of 1998 eBay was catching the eyes of other e-commerce giants in the industry. Amazon.com was one of these who decided to follow the ever growing trend in online auctions.[1] With Amazon's virtual endless funding Pierre realized that he would have to establish some unique features in order to create a gap between eBay and the up and coming auction sites. .
Pierre knew that people were a little skeptical about trusting people on the internet, so he thought of an idea that would identify the quality of the eBay sellers. A system of positive/ negative ratings was created in order to achieve this goal. Every time an eBay user made a sale he/she would be ranked upon the overall quality of the sale. Based upon positive and negative points, the sellers would soon have an established ranking after a few sales. The catch to this system is that if the seller receives four negative ratings, he/she would be kicked off of eBay and not allowed to return. This idea alone gave people the confidence they needed in order to go through with the entire purchasing process.
Another eBay strategy developed was to not only offer items for auction, but also to give the fixed price option to sellers. A seller could simply tag the item for sale with "Buy it Now".
1. Describe the organizational structure of eBay's internal and external communities. In doing so, make sure to discuss its organizational design, operations technology and production strategy, decision-making processes, authority and power relations. eBay has found success as an Internet base...
E-commerce is defined simply as electronic business. This means any business done electronically usually over the internet. E-commerce is the means of selling products or services on the internet using web pages. This involves much of the same processes of selling goods elsewhere, but in a digit...
eBay 1. How does direct marketing make it easy to order products from eBay? Nothing can be more convenient then shopping online. In a normal shopping day, customers will have to go to a store physically. If you are lucky, you have a car, there is no traffic jam, and the store is not far away. ...
Multi-user E-commerce "90% of online shoppers want some sort of human interaction in the process" "Jupiter Communication E-Commerce is the practice of buying and selling products and services over the Internet, utilizing technologies such as the Web, electronic data interchange, email, electronic fund transfers, and smart cards. As e-commerce continues to grow, it becomes clear that human interaction is a necessary (yet mostly lacking) component to the online buying experience. While only 40% of shopping transactions started online are completed (Internet World September, 2002),...
This paper will discuss the success of the eBay phenomenon, emphasizing how its innovative method of global communication filled a much-needed void in the consumer marketplace In 1995, Pierre Omidyar, a Silicon Valley software engineer, created website so his girlfriend could find other collectors of Pez dispensers (Avis, 2002). ...
