An Analysis of the E-bay E-commerce Platform

Running head: AN ASSESSMENT OF E-BAY WEBSITE
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An analysis of the E-bay E-commerce Platform
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AN ASSESSMENT OF E-BAY WEBSITE
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Introduction
E-Bay, an American multinational e-commerce company, facilitates business-to-
consumer as well as consumer-to-consumer sales via its website. With operations in over 30
countries, e-bay is a multibillion-dollar business. E-bay is a shopping website and a platform that
allows users to run online auctions. Buyers freely use the website while sellers pay a fee for
listing items after a limited number of free listings and also after selling the items. Apart from e-
bay’s original auction-style sales, the e-commerce site has expanded and grown to include;
shopping by Universal Product code and other techniques of SKU number as well as instant “buy
it now” shopping. The following report covers an analysis of the e-commerce website e-bay,
including several contents on the Company, such as its organization overview, business model,
and a review of the e-bay website. It concludes by discussing recommendations on ways the
performance of the website can be improved.
E-bay’s Organization overview
Pierre Omidyar started e-bay in 1995, which turned out to be a success during the dot-
com bubble. The French-born Iranian-American founded the website which initially was called
Auctionweb, as a section of a more significant personal site. According to reports, the website
was only a side hobby for the programmer and only upgraded it to a business website after his
Internet service provider advised him to do so as the site was generating a high volume of traffic.
E-bay partnered with Electronic Travel Auction Company for its first third-party licensing deal
in 1996. The deal enabled the Company to use smart market technology in selling plane tickets
as well as other travel products.

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The name of the Company was officially changed from AuctionWeb to e-bay in 1997 and
had its initial public offer the next year. In the early 2000s, eBay grew its product categories
beyond collectibles into almost any saleable product, leading to the business rapidly growing.
By 2000, eBay had a cyber-inventory of over 4.5 million items for sale on any given day and 12
million registered users. In February 2002, e-bay bought iBazar, a European auction web
established in 1998 and then acquired PayPal on October 2002.The Company also acquired 25
percent of Craigslist, a classified listings website in 2004 and acquired Skype in 2005 but
completed its sale in 2009 for 2.75 billion US dollars remaining with only 30 percent equity in
the Company. E-bay also bought StubHub, an online ticket exchange company, in January 2007
for $310 million.
By 2008, e-bay had extended internationally to reach hundreds of millions of registered
users and was hiring 15,000 staff and reaching revenues of close to $7.7 billion. In 2015, E-bay
spin off PayPal into a different public trading company. EBay's common stock has been trading
on the Nasdaq Global Select Market since September 24, 1998. The Company's recent financial
records indicate there are close to 3, 661 holders in record of the Company's common stock. E-
bay has not been paying cash dividends on its stock and only began recently in January 2019
when the Company's board of directors initiated a quarterly cash dividend of $0.14 per share of
common stock to be paid out ( Frooition.com , 2016). EBay’s 2018 annual report indicates the
Company's repurchase activity during the three months ending December 31, 2018, as follows;
The Company's total number of shares bought closed at 22,930,017 and the Company's price per
share was $28.91.

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E-bay has a hierarchical organization structure due to the extensive size of the
organization. The Company underwent a major restructuring of its organizational structure after
the Paypal spinoff. E-bay's board of directors is made up of 11 members with Thomas J. Tierney
being its chairman, and David Wenig is the current CEO and president of the executive team.
E-bay’s business model
E-bay enables commerce over three reportable segments; enterprise, marketplaces, and
payments. The Company has outstanding marketplace features through its website, which is a
leading commerce platform for both merchants and users. E-bay provides different access points
for users to connect virtually anywhere and at any time. Besides, the Company's website
provides a wide selection of inventory worldwide. The Company strives to provide value to the
customers by offering different consumers choice as well as a variety of unique vertical shopping
experiences (eSellerHub, 2017). E-bay's payment features enable shoppers to pay both physically
and also through online transactions. The Company's global scalability and reach provide value
to its merchants and consumers. E-bay focuses on simplifying solutions for developers and
consumers by offering several funding mechanisms and applying leading fraud protection and
prevention payment solutions.
E-bay's enterprise segment drives three core lines of business including commerce
technologies, Omnichannel Operations Solutions, and commerce marketing solutions. The
Company's commerce technologies include an enterprise retail order management solution, an
enterprise payment infrastructure, an enterprise store fulfilment solution, and an enterprise retail
associate platform. The Company's omnichannel solutions include; enterprise freight and