The online auction marketplace eBay.com is a microcosm of e-commerce. Here it consist brief overview of eBay. This document describes how one can use eBay to get the fundamentals of e-commerce, using the Rayport and Jaworski 7Cs framework of the online customer interface. The elements the 7Cs framework are commerce, context, content, community, customization, communication, and connection.
eBay (ebay.com) is the world’s largest auction site, and one of the most profitable e-businesses. The successful online auction house has its roots in a 50-years old novelty item—Pez candy dispensers. Pamela Kerr, an avid collector of Pez dispensers, came up with the idea of trading them over the Internet. When she expressed this idea to her boyfriend (now her husband), Pierre Omidyar, he was instantly struck with the soon-to-be-famous e-business auction concept. In 1995, the Omidyars created a company called AuctionWeb. Later renamed eBay, the company has since become the premier online auction house, with millions of unique auctions in progress and over 500,000 new items added each day. eBay is now much more than an auction house, as we will see. But its initial success was in electronic auctions. The business model of eBay was to provide an electronic infrastructure for conducting mostly C2C auctions, although it caters to small businesses as well.
Technology replaces the traditional auctioneer as the intermediary between buyers and sellers. On eBay, people can buy and sell just about anything. The company collects a submission fee upfront, plus a commission as a percentage of the sale amount. The submission fee is based on the amount of exposure you want your item to receive. For example, a higher fee is required if you would like to be among the “featured auctions” in your specific product category, and an even higher fee if you want your item to be listed on the eBay home page under Featured Items. The auction process begins when the seller fills in the
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