The History of eBay
eBay was founded in Pierre Omidyar's San Jose living room back in September 1995. It was from the start meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals.
In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder Jeff Skoll brought in Meg Whitman to sustain the success. Meg had studied at the Harvard Business School and had learned the importance of branding at companies such as Hasbro.
Meg culled her senior staff from companies such as Pepsico and Disney, created an experienced management team with an average of 20 years of business experience and built a strong vision for the company -- that eBay is a company that's in the business of connecting people, not selling them things.
They quickly shed the image of only auctioning collectibles and moved into an array of upscale markets where the average sale price (ASP) is higher. ASP is a key metric in determining eBay's transaction fees, so increasing the ASP became an important item. By forging partnerships with namebrands such as GM, Disney and Sun, eBay has managed to do exactly that. Sun has sold
$10 million worth of equipment and it now lists between 20 and 150 items per day.
The Business Model
eBay has built an online person-to-person trading community on the Internet, using the World Wide Web. Buyers and sellers are brought together in a manner where sellers are permitted to list items for sale, buyers to bid on items of interest and all eBay users to browse through listed items in a fully automated way. The items are arranged by topics, where each type of auction has its own category.
eBay has both streamlined and globalized traditional person-to-person trading, which has traditionally been conducted through such forms as garage sales, collectibles shows, flea markets and more, with their web interface. This facilitates easy exploration for buyers and enables the sellers to immediately list an item for sale within minutes of registering.
Browsing and bidding on auctions is free of charge, but sellers are charged two kinds of charges:
When an item is listed on eBay a nonrefundable Insertion Fee is charged, which ranges between 30 cents and $3.30, depending on the seller's opening bid on the item.
A fee is charged for additional listing options to promote the item, such as highlighted or bold listing.
A Final Value (final sale price) fee is charged at the end of the seller's auction.
Although there is much competition out there, Ross is different from other retail stores. The reason for this is that Ross acquires most of their merchandise comes from their competitors, such as name brand department stores who ordered too much of an item and have decided not to sell it anymore. The overstock then results in in a loss of money for this company which in turn becomes a gain for Ross since the items are sold to Ross at a low price. By following these actions constantly, this is then the way that Ross has great prices for the name brand products sold at the location.
Price is that which is given up in an exchange to acquire a good or service. Price is typically the money exchanged for the good or service. Blue Jays pricing structure is based on the perceived value of the game, the entertainment, the love of baseball, and the action, not just the money.
There are no statutory guarantees available at traditional auction using auctioneer if the goods purchased do not fit for the purpose, do not correspond with the description and do not have an acceptable quality. (ACL s 2)
Imagine an older, online business where everyone was happily buying and selling from it. People are auctioning off valuables and goods while buying a range of items for a cheaper price. It stays this way on the same black and white website to this very day. EBay has been around since it was “Formed as a sole proprietorship in September 1995," via California. Its platform is meant to allow buyers and sellers with internet access to connect globally. It determines its success by the success of the people buying and selling through it. Unfortunately, today more people are choosing other online sellers. These competitors, similar to eBay, have bolder advertisements, offer well-matched bargains, as well
This price is set between the bid/asking price of $3.94/lb that included the delivery cost of $.60/lb and our reservation price of $3.15/lb. This is the price at which we hope to conclude our negotiation. 3. The reservation price is $3.15/lb, this is the lowest price that we will sell to Statler for the deal. This price represents a loss of about $0.20/lb, but this loss is approximately an $1,100 investment in publicity.
o Shoes and clothing - $125 billion. o Electronics and appliances - $85 billion. o
Best Buy’s History & Main Characters: Best Buy is Minneapolis-based and is North America's leading specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances. Throughout Best Buy's 37-year history, the company has maintained the tradition of making life fun and easy for customers and employees, while providing a significant return to partners and investors. It has 80,000 employees and over 550 stores in the U.S., in addition to the brands Best Buy Canada, Future Shop and Magnolia Hi-Fi. Their leadership is led by Dick Schulze, Founder and Chairman, Brad Anderson, Vice Chairman and CEO, Al Lenzmeier, President and COO, and Darren Jackson, Executive Vice President of Finance and CFO. Chairman Dick Schulze founded Best Buy in 1966 with the Sound of Music, an audio component systems store in St. Paul, Minn. In 1973, Vice Chairman and CEO Brad Anderson joined Sound of Music as a salesperson. The company quickly expanded into video products and computers, was renamed Best Buy in 1983, and became a public company in 1985. Best Buy’s revenues for fiscal year 2003 were $20.9 billion and net earnings of $622 million. It was ranked number 91 on the Fortune 500 in 2003 (Bestbuy.com). Best Buy stores are redefining the way customers shop by offering an unparalleled assortment of affordable, easy-to-use entertainment and technology products and services available through its network of more than 550 retail stores in 48 states and online at BestBuy.com. Best Buy is scheduled to open 60 new stores in fiscal 2003 and is on track to have 650 stores by fiscal 2005. Magnolia Hi-Fi is a high-end electronics retailer specializing in audio and video solutions for homes, ...
The ecommerce industry is growing faster than ever. TJ Maxx needs to start focusing more on ecommerce not only to keep up with competition, but also to make sure they do well during weak economic periods. ecommerce, overall, tends to do very well during lackluster economic times. TJ Maxx will be able to cut costs more easily the more they expand their ecommerce business. Our business idea will allow them to expand their ecommerce as we will take over their website and delivery. TJX Companies’ three ecommerce sites accounts for only about 1.0% of the company’s total sales. However, the online channel is a key growth driver and TJX is taking initiatives to improve its online business. The ecommerce sales
Cost-plus pricing, it the industry pricing standard, and is a method to determine a price of the product by finding the cost per unit and then including a mark-up
Additionally, brand equity, the company’s reputation, and Best Buy’s internet presence and website are also valuable intangible resources. In fact, the article mentioned that Best Buy has the 11th largest e-commerce website worldwide. Best Buy’s core competency lies within the company’s focus towards “customer-centricity attained thorough the in-depth data analysis and systematic customer segmentation.” To restate that, Best Buy differentiates themselves from their competition by providing expert advice and service at prices that compete with competition.
Online Auction e.g. eBay. In common with new online retail brands, before the emergence of Internet technologies, this concept was not possible. Essentially eBay is a Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) business. For more information on how online auctions work, see the lesson on eMarketing and price.
The cost of an item is predominantly the reason why someone would get the item. No one would want to
In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay. It has quickly become popular. Today the company offers services in thirty-eight
Priceline.com incurred tremendous success in its beginning years. However, the success story has been put on hold in 2000. Priceline.com is now faced with many critical issues. Recently, Priceline.com has suffered a serious beating from its investors and is now hanging on the edge of survival with both failures from WebHouse Club and Perfect Yardsale. Major areas of concerns, which will be analysed in further details later on, for Priceline.com include: contested patent techniques, poor customer service, need of new brand identity, dependence on travel industry, falling stock price, and fierce new competitors.
E-commerce has grown significantly over the past years, it has helped small businesses to expand and create new businesses mush easier and faster than before, it also has changed the way they deal with customers and helped the growth of the economy, and more and more businesses are doing their business over the web, all of that shows how important EC is in many aspects and how it will continue emerging between businesses.