1. ITS 450
INTRODUCTION TO E-BUSINESS
TITLE: eBay

2. Company founders
Company background
Core business
Business model
IT application
Success story
Lesson learnt
Table of contents

3. Company founders
• eBay is the online auction website was
founded as AuctionWeb in San Jose,
California on September 3,1995.
• The founders of eBay is
Pierre Omidyar
 he is French-born
Iranian computer programmer.

4. Company Background
• One of the first items that sold by eBay was a
broken laser point .
• Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he
understood that the laser pointer was broken. In
his responding email, the buyer explain “I’m a
collector of broken laser pointers”.
• As an early Internet enthusiast, Pierre knew that
people needed a central location to buy and sell all
kinds of items on a level playing field and to meet
other users with similar interests. He started eBay
to fulfill this need.

5. • At the time, Pierre's fiancée (now
wife),Pamela Kerr was an avid Pez (sweet
dispenser) collector. Came up with the idea of
trading them over the internet. When she
shared this idea to her boyfriend, Pierre
Omidyar instantly stuck with the soon-to-be-
famous e-business auction concept.
• In November 1996, eBay entered into the first
third-party licensing deal, with a company
called Electronic Travel Auction to use
SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets
and other travel products.

6. • The company was officially changed the
name of its service from AuctionWeb to
eBay in September 1997.
• Originally, Omidyar want to register the
domain name echobay.com due to the site
belong to Echo Bay Technology
Group(Omidyar’s consulting firm), but
found it already taken by Echo Bay Mines
(a gold mining company).

7. Core Business
• Originally, eBay's core business was to offer
auction services online as well as the technology
to do so. However, auction services are now easily
duplicated and are available on many different
sites.
• Today, eBay's core business seems to be their
name recognition and high website traffic. The
large amount of traffic to eBay brings a large
number of sellers and buyers together so that an
extremely large collection of products can be
found for purchase.

8. Business Model
Value proposition
Revenue Model
Competitive
Environment
Market
Oppurtunity
• Amazon auctions, Yahoo! auctions
• Advertising, transaction fees
• Locally and globally
• One of the world leading
auction site

9. Competitive
advantage
Market strategy
Organizational
development
Management
team
• Increasing international trade
• Increasing mutual interaction
between PayPal and eBay
• Internet, community (auctioneer, bidder,
seller, buyer)
• Offered in 30 countries nationwide
• John Donahoe current president and
CEO of eBay.
• He has served as president of eBay
market places.
• He has received a Bachelor of Art in
Economics and MBA from Stanford
Graduates School of Business.

10. IT Application
1. Ebay mobile
• eBay on iPhone
With the eBay iPhone application, eBay members
can search, buy, pay and check their activity and
status wherever they are.
With alerts, buyers are notified of status changes
and updates so they can put in that last minute bid
on a hard-to-find item.
Sellers can check the status of their sales.
Users can also manage eBay account and task
whether it’s leaving feedback, responding to
messages, or checking out the Daily Deals without
computer.

11. • eBay on Blackberry
Users can receive alerts when there is a change
in an item’s status.
Messages sent by buyers can be viewed and
reply
Users can get calendar reminders and email
notifications for listing end dates
Users also can pay for an item using PayPal®
Other that that, users can review sale items, view
items that have sold and relist items

12. 2. Paypal
• an e-commerce business allowing payments and
money transfers to be made through the Internet.
• A PayPal account can be funded with an
electronic debit from a bank account or by a
credit card.
• The recipient of a PayPal transfer can either
request a check from PayPal, establish their own
PayPal deposit account or request a transfer to
their bank account.
• eBay made Billpoint its official payment system,
but due to its limited functions, Paypal has been
the top choice of payment for ebay customers.
Thus, in October 2002, PayPal was acquired by
eBay for $1.5 billion

13. Success Story
• In 1997, the site hosted 2,000,000 auctions,
compare with 250,000 during the whole
1996.
• At that time, the company received $6.7
million in funding from the venture capital.
• In 1998, the company had 30 employees, half
a million users and revenues of $4.7 million in
the United States.

14. • In Feb 2002, the company purchased Ibazar,
a similar European auction web site founded
in 1995 and then bought Paypal on October
14,2002.
• In early 2008, the company had expanded
worldwide .
• About hundred of millions of registered users,
15000+ employees and revenues of almost
$7.7 billion.
• In late 2009, eBay completed the sale of
Skype for $2.75 Billions.

15. •Awards
Public Counsel Corporate Achievement
Award
Tops the list of the”Most Trusted
Companies for Privacy”
Marketing Excellent Award
Wins Application of the Year for
E-Commerce
2007 National Medal of Technology and
Innovation
Fortune names eBay Inc. “A Great Place
to Work”

16. Lesson Learnt
• Have faith in yourself and ignore what
people say.
• A good leader should make a wise
decision and have a good strategy plan in
order to achieve company’s goal.