Business Model

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One of the major ways of sustainably doing business is through the designing of an efficient business model. A business model explains the justification of how a firm delivers, creates and captures value (Muehlhausen 2013). A business model enhances sustainability in terms of creating a successful and profitable business entity in the long-run. It enables entities to withstand various business environments thereby surviving over a long time. The relevance of a business model is reinforced by having a wide scope since it applies to various diverse settings including NGO’s, Public sector administration, schools, as well as individuals. One of the most current contributions to the turf of the business model conceptualization is the business model canvas. This concept was proposed by Osterwalder in 2010. A business model canvas refers to a lean startup and strategic management template for developing new or documenting an existing business model (Osterwalder 2013). In this context, it involves the use of a visual chart that contains elements that describe the firm’s infrastructure, value proposition, finances and customers. It helps organizations in aligning their activities by demonstrating potential trade-offs. This paper will utilize the business model canvas to describe eBay’s internet business model.
EBay’s Internet Business Model
This section will describe the nine business model building blocks to illustrate eBay’s internet business model.
Infrastructure
Key activities
Being a significant Online Marketplace, eBay’s key activities include marketing various commodities from various parts of the world so as to match sellers with potential buyers (Shaw 2003). This indicates that the corporation is actively involved in sourcing fo...

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...he eBay services, whether buying or selling a product. A percentage of the revenue accrued goes to eBay to compensate them for their services. This revenue is calculated using a certain percentage of the sales.
Conclusion
As observed above, the business model canvas is a crucial tool for analyzing a given corporation’s business model. The link introduced between value proposition and the firm’s infrastructure ensures that that the business model gets closer to the objective of identifying how the business model will achieve its goals. This indicates that it is a comprehensive way of presenting a business model to the stakeholders and also offering guidance to the firm itself. The business model canvas presented above offers evidence as to why eBay has managed to survive in an online business environment given that many internet businesses do not survive for long.

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