International Business for eBay Essay

Submitted By samredekop
Words: 804
Pages: 4

eBay Inc. began as a small, primarily local website called AuctionWeb. The purpose was much like eBay Classifieds is today: to provide a platform for the sale of items between individual buyers and sellers. eBay’s growth was fostered greatly by starting during the dotcom boom and being taken to as a quirky, online flee market. Since then it has expanded greatly, into new markets and around the world. The most notable of eBay’s market expansions is StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace. Tickets for anything from sports events to concerts to ballets can be purchased there. eBay has also expanded internationally to many countries including the Czech Republic, Norway, Finland, Greece, and Sweden. eBay’s expansion success is due to inserting itself into areas where an online auction site did not previously exist or purchasing existing companies that offered different products or services that could be used to offer a larger variety to eBay customers. Started in San Jose, California, in 1995, by an Iranian-American by the name of Pierre Omidyar, AuctionWeb was a small website with not much ambition behind it. AuctionWeb was simply a smaller part of a larger website created by Omidyar, however, it did not stay like that for long. Due to a large amount of traffic on his website, Omidyar was forced to upgrade his website and pay a premium. He then had to begin charging for people to use his website. In 1996, what was now called eBay, hosted a staggering 250,000 auctions. Its growth since 1995 had been astronomical, but that was nothing compared to the beginning of 1997. In January of 1997, the site hosted more than 2,000,000 auctions, an increase of over 80% of the entire previous year. eBay was no longer a small, local site; it was quickly gaining momentum and interest from buyers and sellers around the world. Even though eBay is now a global company, some of its expansion efforts were met with considerable resistance and some ventures failed completely while others furthered the company greatly. eBay’s online auctions are available for buyers and sellers in almost every country in the world. While eBay’s services may be available everywhere in the world, it is only situated in a handful of countries. eBay has landed itself in Canada, the United States, and many European nations but was quite unsuccessful in certain areas such as New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, and China. Despite the internet being relatively young, the word having only been officially defined in the same year AuctionWeb was created , eBay was still not quick enough to penetrate certain countries. Many of eBay’s international expansion failures were a direct result of an attempt to set up shop in a country that already had an auction site that fulfilled the needs of the existing population. Over the years eBay attempted to enter various countries as the dominant auction site. Some of these attempts proved fruitful and others did not. In 2002, eBay set up a branch specifically for China. Though the company was successful in the first year, they encountered stiff competition