About eBay
American Internet company that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide.
One of the first items sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel
Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. January
1997 the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions, compared with 250,000 during the whole of 1996.
1.
Founded in 1995, by Pierre Omidyar
2.
In 2003, EBay, the global leader in online auctions. Mission Statement: “eBay's mission is to provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.”
3.
More than 100 million people use eBay globally, and according to the company internet users spend more time on eBay than any other internet site.
4.
eBay also offers the payment service PayPal to ensure quick and safe money transfers.
5.
At present eBay employs 8,100 people.
6.
EBay became the first company to allow mobile access to payment services when it unveiled its mobile version of Pay Pal. Users can now make cash payments online using their cell phones. The service is currently available in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain.
7.
EBay plans to start a new branch site designed for consumers who do not want to wait for auction times to close to make their purchases. The new site will be called EBay
Express and will feature all the items that are currently listed amongst the auctions as
Buy It Now. The new site will be much more image rich than the somewhat plain appearance of the mother site.
Business and financials
1.
EBay’s main source of revenues are from listing, feature, advertising, as well as
2.
paid fees on transactions which include both fees collected from the selling part and from
3.
The usage of PayPal.
4.
The main market is the United States
5.
The United States generated nearly 75% of all revenues.
6.
The cause of this growth is due to steady increases in
• Number of registered users
• User activity
• Number of listings
• User gross merchandise volume, and

• PayPal transactions
Items
7.
Millions of collectibles , decor , appliances , computers , furnishings , equipment , vehicles , and other miscellaneous items are listed, bought, or sold daily on eBay.
8.
Large international companies, such as IBM , sell their newest products and offer services on eBay using competitive auctions and fixed-priced storefronts.
Prohibited or restricted items
 Tobacco (tobacco-related items and collectibles are accepted.) [48]
 Alcohol (alcohol-related collectibles, including sealed containers, as well as some wine sales by licensed sellers are allowed, some sites such as ebay.com.au allow licensed liquor sales) [49]
 Drugs and drug paraphernalia
[50]
 Human parts and remains (with an exception for skeletons and skulls for scientific study,
 provided they are not Native American in origin)
[56]
Live animals (with certain exceptions)
[57]
 Certain copyrighted works or trademarked items.
[58]
 Lottery tickets, sweepstakes tickets, or any other gambling items.
[59]
 Military hardware such as working weapons or explosives.
Auction types
 Auction-style listings allow the seller to offer one or more items for sale for a specified number of days. The seller can establish a reserve price .
 Fixed price format allows the seller to offer one or more items for sale at a Buy It Now
 price. Buyers who agree to pay that price win the auction immediately without submitting a bid.
Fixed price format with best offer allows the seller to accept best offers. If a buyer submits a best offer, the seller either rejects or accepts the best offer. If the best offer is not satisfactory, a seller may submit a counter offer to the buyer. Best offer is not available for auction style listings. In addition, best offer is not available in every category. Sellers also meet specific requirements in order to sell with best offer.
Bidding
Auction-style listings
Bidding on eBay's auction-style listings is called proxy bidding

Skype eBay Inc. acquired Skype in 2005 and significantly expanded its customer base to more than 480 million registered users worldwide. To focus on its core e-commerce and payments businesses
Strengths
• Strong and trusted brand name
• High product quality and safety
• Highly skilled management
• Strong financial state
• Not very effected by economics trends
Weaknesses

Potential system breakdowns

eBay can be abused by people with illegal or fraudulent intents
 eBay does a very bad job of controlling fake or illegal auctions. There are numerous auctions still out there whose main purpose is to scam the buyers or are illegal auctions.
A good example would be scammers trying to sell just the packaging box of the product and claiming it to be the real product. These sellers save themselves by claiming that the information about the product being just the packaging box is stated in the auction description, which is true. But the statement is in a very fine print. the sellers being able to enforce the payment method of their choice. This is a big favorite among the scammers as they choose a payment method like money transfers which does not protect the buyers from losing their money and buyers not retuning back to eBay
Shipping has been one of the biggest problems while shopping on eBay. Sellers to make their products on top of the search list practice lowering the price of the product while increasing the cost of the shipping as much as twice the price of the product. This has lead to buyers fleeing away to retail stores for better deal Another weakness of eBay is its inability to control the contents of the auction and auction items.
Most of the content is checked only after the content or the auction has been posted. Due to this inability it facilitates large sale of copyrighted and not for resale items
Opportunities
• International growth - especially in the power economies China and India
• Challenging phone companies market share through Skype
• Other takeovers
Threats
• Yahoo, Amazon.com and Google product developments
• Increase in external illegal activities