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Ebay: “the World’s Largest Online Marketplace”- a Case Study

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Ebay: “the World’s Largest Online Marketplace”- a Case Study
eBay: “The world’s largest online marketplace”- A Case Study
J.Gopalkrishnan* V.K Gupta** Abstract eBay, Inc. is the largest and most popular marketplace on the Internet, allowing members to buy and sell almost anything. Launched in 1995, about 147 million people now use eBay. An estimated 430,000 people in the United States make all or most of their living by selling on eBay. eBay’s online payment service, called PayPal, enables transactions nearly anywhere in the world. eBay proclaims “trust” between buyers and sellers as the key to the success of the marketplace. eBay is the “The world’s Online Marketplace”, which is its positioning statement, and it means many things about the company’s identity. It enables trade on local, national and international basis, with a diverse and passionate community of individuals and small businesses. eBay offers an online platform where millions of items are traded each day. The objective at eBay was to “to develop the work ethic and culture of eBay as a fun, open and trusting environment and to keep the organization focused on the big picture objectives and key priorities. The company market capitalization had surpassed that of even Amazon.com, making it the “world’s most valuable Internet retailer”. Pierre Omidyar, founder, is focused to achieve excellence in strategic management for improving the company’s strategy, sustaining the company’s growth and business performance, and potentially expanding from online auctions into general “etailing”, and to become “the world’s largest online mall”. This research paper intends to study the click and click business model of eBay, whose competitive advantage lies in its pure play strategy, a breakthrough from the traditional brick and mortar model, which leads to sustainable growth and a competitive edge over the other retailers. Keywords: Online marketplace, etailing, work ethics, online auctions/platform/mall Introduction: eBay establishes itself as the “The world’s Online


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