...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”...
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...*Institute of Management, Nirma University of Science & Technology, Ahmedabad. E-mail: jaya_gopalkrishnan2000@yahoo.com **Indian Institute of Management, Indore 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...
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...defined into the use of the internet as a shopping. This essay will examine whether online shopping will become popular than traditional shopping in the future. This essay will focus on the convenience, product information and lower costs. To begin with, the first feature is that shopping on the internet offers covenience to shoppers. Compared to shopping in traditional stores, online consumers do not need to shop at physical locations such as stores and shopping center. Shoppers can access to anywhere in the connected internet and decide to buy products anytime. In the case shoppers lack of time, they can also use e-shopping to save their time and choose the goods which they want. Online consumers do not need to consider the weather conditions and just need to stay at home to use their computers. Shoppers always use some websites to order their goods. Ahuja and Roman (2003) state that some trusted websites like eBay, Barnes and Noble or I-tunes can reduce the stress of shopping online and make it easier for people to enjoy online shopping. Even though traditional shopping can help people experience the fun of traditional shopping, shopping online can both relax shoppers bodies and minds. What is more, the second feature is that shoppers can use the internet as a powerful research tool to achieve a large amount of information in the purchasing process. According to Chang (2007), reviews and recommendations are necessary points in impacting the decisions. Lokken (et. al. 2003) also...
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...the Framework and Communicating the Value Proposition Building Customer Relationships Characteristics of Successful Brands Conclusion 1 BUILDING SUCCESSFUL BRANDS ON THE INTERNET CHAPTER 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 THE INTERNET 33 34 34 35 35 39 40 43 Introduction Overview of the Internet 4.2.1 The Defining Characteristics of the Internet The Growth of the Internet The Internet & e-Commerce The Impact of the Internet on Business Conclusion CHAPTER 5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8 5.9 BUILDING BRANDS ON THE INTERNET 44 45 45 47 48 50 51 52 57 59 60 Introduction The New Dynamics of Brands The Importance of Customer Loyalty Online Increasing Returns Economics and First-Mover Advantage Viral Marketing 5.5.1 The Case of Hotmail.com The Online Experience & The 7Cs Framework The Interactive...
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...A–Z OF eBUSINESS MODELS Written and researched by Suntop Media Adobe Systems A Adobe Systems Adobe Systems was founded by John Warnock (now CEO and chairman) and Charles Geschke (president and chairman). Both worked at Xerox’s famous Palo Alto Research Center (Parc). Geschke arrived there via Carnegie Mellon and Xavier University. Warnock took a more circuitous route by way of the Evans & Sutherland Computer Corp., Computer Sciences, IBM and the University of Utah. Adobe helped ignite the revolution in desktop publishing in the early 1980s. Its software includes Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop. Headquartered at San Jose, CA, it now employs 2,700 people. Adobe’s interests include Adobe Ventures and Adobe Ventures II. Venture capital partnerships with Hambrecht and Quist have earned over $100 million since 1994. Links: www.adobe.com Amazon.com Amazon.com must be the most talked about company in the world. For a business that’s just five years old that’s quite an achievement; for one that has yet to make a single penny in profits, it’s unheard of. But then Amazon.com is more than just a business; it’s a business phenomenon. Launched as a website in June 1995, by the beginning of 1999 Amazon.com Inc. had a market capitalization of $6 billion, by August 1999 it had jumped to $20 billion. Amazon’s value can vary by several billion depending on stock market sentiment. Founder Jeff Bezos has promoted Amazon.com to the point where it is now synonymous with ecommerce...
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...Wal-mart 2013 Principles of Management Wal-Mart and Effective Management Karwan S. Othman Wal-Mart, United States Of America Wal-Mart at Its Peak Wal-Mart is the largest retailer worldwide; the reasons may vary from different functional fields of the company. Fifty years ago, the company started the business based on the lowest prices that could be offered to customers. Since then, Wal-Mart is “Everyday low price” pricing strategy to maximize the sales as much as possible. Besides of that, it is using the current technology to keep track on every single sale at each store among all the stores in around forty countries. New financial systems through the new technology being in charge enable the company to manage the financial systems of each single store. Wal-Mart’s mission is to get to zero waste and highest sales among the other retailers. It is been said that Wal-Mart is doing the best of retailing, and it is because of various aspects of the organization although I believe planning, low pricing, using modern information systems and controlling strategies are the most vital characteristics of the organization’s triumph. Wal-Mart is established based on lowest prices possible for customers, and that is one of the most significant factors of the company’s success. Everyday low pricing, EDLP is a strategy that organizations use to offer low prices than common prices of products which would encourage customers to purchase without waiting for sales. According to the...
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...Homework – Study Trip San Francisco & Silicon Valley Mag. Roland Suttner ------------------------------------------------- December 2013 “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Alva Edison “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure” -Napoleon Hill Contents 1 Venture Capital 4 2 Mechanics of raising equity capital 5 2.1 Equity financing for private companies – Sources for funding 5 2.1.1 Angel Investors 5 2.1.2 Venture Capital Firms 6 2.1.3 Institutional Investors 6 2.1.4 Corporate Investors 6 2.2 Outside Investors 6 2.3 Exiting an Investment in a Private Company 7 3 The process of start-up funding 8 3.1 Idea and co-founder stage 8 3.2 Family and friends stage 8 3.3 Seed or angel round 8 3.4 Venture Capital Round 8 4 The Initial Public Offering 10 4.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of Going Public 10 5 Key Elements for successful Entrepreneurship 11 6 The importance of Silicon Valley in the U.S. venture capital system 13 6.1 Venture Capital Investment in the U.S. 13 6.1.1 Venture Capital Investment since 2006 13 6.1.2 Investment by industry 13 6.1.3 Investment by regions 15 6.2 Evolution of Silicon Valley 15 6.3 Silicon Valley – an advanced high tech entrepreneurial habitat 16 6.4 The Power of Clustering 16 6.5 Features of an advanced high tech entrepreneurial habitat 16 6.6 The high-tech habitat:...
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...JOURNAL OF APPLIED ECONOMETRICS J. Appl. Econ. 23: 925– 948 (2008) Published online 7 November 2008 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jae.1036 ECONOMETRICS OF AUCTIONS BY LEAST SQUARES LEONARDO REZENDE* PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Illinois, USA SUMMARY I investigate using the method of ordinary least squares (OLS) on auction data. I find that for parameterizations of the valuation distribution that are common in empirical practice, an adaptation of OLS provides unbiased estimators of structural parameters. Under symmetric independent private values, adapted OLS is a specialization of the method of moments strategy of Laffont, Ossard and Vuong (1995). In contrast to their estimator, here simulation is not required, leading to a computationally simpler procedure. The paper also discusses using estimation results for inference on the shape of the valuation distribution, and applicability outside the symmetric independent private values framework. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 15 September 2006; Revised 1 July 2008 1. INTRODUCTION The field of econometrics of auctions has been successful in providing methods for the investigation of auction data that are well grounded in economic theory and allow for inference on the structure of an auction environment. Today, a researcher has a number of alternative structural methods, especially within the independent private-values paradigm...
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...Case Studies of Cybercrime and Its Impact on Marketing Activity and Shareholder Value Katherine T. Smith Department of Marketing Texas A&M University 4112 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4112 Tel: 979-845-1062 Fax: 979-862-2811 Email: Ksmith@mays.tamu.edu L. Murphy Smith, CPA* Mays Business School Texas A&M University 4353 TAMU College Station, TX 77843-4353 Phone: 979-845-3108 Fax: 979-845-0028 Email: Lmsmith@tamu.edu Jacob L. Smith Grace Bible Church College Station, TX 77845 JacobSmith@grace-bible.org *Corresponding author Forthcoming in Academy of Marketing Studies Journal Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1724815 CASE STUDIES OF CYBERCRIME AND ITS IMPACT ON MARKETING ACTIVITY AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE Katherine T. Smith, Texas A&M University L. Murphy Smith, Texas A&M University Jacob L. Smith, Grace Bible Church ABSTRACT Cybercrime, also called e-crime, costs publicly traded companies billions of dollars annually in stolen assets and lost business. Cybercrime can totally disrupt a company’s marketing activities. Further, when a company falls prey to cyber criminals, this may cause customers to worry about the security of their business transactions with the company. As a result, a company can lose future business if it is perceived to be vulnerable to cybercrime. Such vulnerability can lead to a decrease in the market value of the company, due to legitimate concerns of financial analysts, investors, and creditors. This study examines...
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...EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This dissertation set out to explore how the Internet is changing the brand-building environment, in order to identify the new sources of value, the new brand-building tools and strategies, and to outline the key factors that contribute to the development of a successful online brand. With power shifting to customers, the success of an online brand is largely determined by customer choice. The repeated choice of a certain brand by customers and business partners generates the transactions and repeat business that counterbalances the costs of customer acquisition and infrastructure. Repeat transactions provide the basis for a relationship that, when properly cultivated, creates value for both the company and its customers. This relationship is the basis for the customer loyalty that creates a successful online brand. The companies that are successfully building relationships and fostering brand loyalty are those that recognise that their brand's perceived value hinges on the total end-to-end customer experience, from the promises made in the value proposition, to its delivery to the customer. It is about enticing customers, gaining their trust, and making the experience so satisfying that they are confident in their choice and will return again, and will tell others about it. It aims to create “apostles”, instead of “terrorists”. As such, brand-building on the Internet extends beyond the traditional focus of positioning, advertising, promotions, catchy logos and...
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...MARCH 2007 Professor Romain Wacziarg Littlefield 214 Tel: (650) 723 6069 wacziarg@gsb.stanford.edu http://www.stanford.edu/~wacziarg Assistant: Chris Lion Littlefield 330 Tel: (650) 723 9040 lion_chris@gsb.stanford.edu POLECON 230 - NONMARKET STRATEGY This course addresses managerial issues in the social, political and legal environments of business. Cases and readings emphasize strategies to improve the performance of companies in light of their multiple constituencies, in both international and US environments. Topics include integrated strategy, activists and the media, legislation affecting business, lobbying, regulation and antitrust, intellectual property, international trade policy, and business ethics. Most core courses focus on firms’ interactions with customers, suppliers, and alliance partners in the form of mutually beneficial exchange transacted in markets. In contrast, this course considers the strategic interactions of firms with comparably important constituents, organizations, and institutions outside of markets. Issues considered include those involving activist and interest groups, the media, legislatures, regulatory and antitrust agencies, and international organizations such as the WTO. Markets and the business environment are increasingly interrelated: issues such as boycotts, legislation, regulation, judicial decisions, and trade policy directly affect firms’ market performance. Conversely, the profit-maximizing activities of firms often give rise...
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...December 2006, eBay Inc., a US company that offered e-commerce, e-payments and internet communication services globally, announced its plan to form a joint venture with China-based online portal and wireless operator, TOM Online, in which eBay would have 49% ownership.1 The move reflected the increasing difficulties foreign internet companies were facing in their attempts to snatch a share of the Chinese market amid fierce competition and a changing market environment. eBay first set foot in China in 2002 by acquiring 33% interest in EachNet—a domestic online auction company, followed by a full acquisition in 2003.2,3 In 2005, eBay acquired Skype4 to expand into the online communication sector. While Skype was a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay globally, it operated indirectly in China via a joint venture with TOM Online. Due to this existing relationship between the two companies,5 TOM Online seemed to be a natural choice of partner for eBay’s subsequent decision with regards to its online marketplace business. Recognising TOM Online’s local knowledge and political connections, eBay believed that a joint venture would benefit its failing business in China and help the company further develop its Chinese market.6 Some analysts questioned whether political connections alone were the answer and suggested that eBay focus on its product and service offerings.7 Vara, V. and Chao, L. (20 December 2006) “EBay’s China retreat highlights a tough market”, Wall Street Journal. eBay (Date Unknown)...
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...traditional form of book-building through an investment bank necessarily the best course of action? As large investment banks were courting Google's potentially enormous business, management had to evaluate the different options available for a company ready to move forward. Ultimately, Google chose to sell its stock through W.R. Hambrecht + Co.'s OpenIPO, which was modeled on auction-based offering formats in France, Japan and elsewhere. In 2004, Hambrecht's track record of success was mixed at best and even today the future of this IPO format in the United States is far from certain. IN THE SPRING OF 2004, GOOGLE WAS ONE OF THE MOST TALKED-ABOUT I. HISTORY AND BUSINESS MODEL In 1995, Larry Page, 24, and Sergey Brin, 23, first met as Stanford University computer science graduate students.4 Their company Web site describes that first encounter as a clash of personalities that eventually led to their now-famous creative solution for retrieving relevant information from large sets of data.' At the time, search engines, for the most part, ranked search results by the number of hits for Assistant Professor of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Darden School of Business. This Article was composed with the assistance of Christopher DuPaul (MBA '04) and Herbert Frazier (MBA '04). Copyright © 2004 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville,...
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...CASE: E308 DATE: 02/14/08 ENDEAVOR Endeavor was formed for the purpose of promoting entrepreneurs in emerging markets, beginning in Latin America. Its basic model is to link up small and midsize businesses with seasoned entrepreneurs so that little guys and gals can get the advice and contacts they need to grow their companies into bigger businesses that can employ more people—the best antipoverty program of all. —Thomas L. Friedman, from his book, The World is Flat (version 3.0) It was July 2007, and Linda Rottenberg, cofounder and CEO of Endeavor—a nonprofit dedicated to transforming the economies of emerging markets by identifying and supporting high-impact entrepreneurs—was preparing for a quarterly meeting with the global board of directors. She leafed through a copy of the 2007 Impact Report, checking over the newly published figures one more time. In its 10-year history, Endeavor had selected 272 promising entrepreneurs in eight countries, after screening 15,500 candidates, and then helped them develop and grow their businesses through ongoing mentorship and guidance. Rottenberg was proud of the organization’s accomplishments, but she also knew there was no time for complacency. With aggressive goals for international expansion, the board would definitely want to hear an update on Rottenberg’s growth strategy. The directors had also asked to discuss the recent surge in corporate partnership opportunities and long-term plans for funding Endeavor’s...
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...Strategy & Technology a gallaugher.com chapter provided free to faculty & students for non-commercial use © Copyright 1997-2008, John M. Gallaugher, Ph.D. – for more info see: http://www.gallaugher.com/chapters.html Last modified: Sept. 13, 2008 Note: this is an earlier version of the chapter. All chapters updated after July 2009 are now hosted (and still free) at http://www.flatworldknowledge.com. For details see the ‘Courseware’ section of http://gallaugher.com INTRODUCTION Managers are confused, and for good reason. Management theorists, consultants, and practitioners often vehemently disagree on how firms should craft tech-enabled strategy, and many widely read articles contradict one another. Headlines such as "Move First or Die" compete with "The First Mover Disadvantage." A leading former CEO advises "destroy your business,” while others suggest firms focus on their "core competency" and "return to basics." The pages of the Harvard Business Review declared “IT Doesn’t Matter”, while a New York Times’ bestseller hails technology as the "steroids" of modern business. Theorists claiming to have mastered the secrets of strategic management are contentious and confusing. But as a manager, the ability to size up a firm's strategic position and understand its likelihood of sustainability is one of the most valuable, yet difficult skills to master. Layer on thinking about technology – a key enabler to nearly every modern business strategy, but also a function...
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