eBay Marketing Strategy Analysis

This assignment requires a comprehensive analysis of eBay's current marketing strategies. Students must identify eBay's target age group, examine its competitive landscape against major players like Amazon, and assess the importance of online reputation management for building brand image. The analysis should highlight key areas where eBay can strengthen its marketing efforts to achieve success in the evolving e-commerce market.

Running Head: Marketing Management & Digital Communication
E-Bay Australia
Marketing Management & Digital Communication

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Executive Summary
E-Bay is the 9th largest internet company in the world which facilitates transaction between buyers
and sellers on its platform. The company was initially started as a company which used was used to
buy and sell the used products, but with the advancement in the technology and growth in the e-
commerce landscape the company started offering new products to its customers. E-Bay Australia
has a target demographic in the age range of 16-60, and due to wide adoption of internet in
Australia, marketing promotion on the digital platforms is more efficient and effective. Further with
the smartphone penetration targeting to the consumers on the go has become easy and E-Bay is
using the advantages of mobile marketing to promote its products to its audience. High targeted
content is distributed to the consumers and the company relies heavily on the concept of
remarketing on the digital platforms. The value chain analysis shows that E-Bay is perceived as a
reliable platform when one looks to go online for shopping. Internet population in Australia is 80%
which is a good advantage for E-Bay to promote its product.

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Table of Content
Brief Background...................................................................................................................................4
Research Methods.................................................................................................................................5
Primary Data Collection.....................................................................................................................5
Secondary Research Methods...........................................................................................................6
Current Value Analysis...........................................................................................................................7
Value Chain Analysis..........................................................................................................................7
Primary Activities...............................................................................................................................8
Inbound Logistics...........................................................................................................................8
Operations.....................................................................................................................................8
Outbound Logistics........................................................................................................................9
Marketing & Sales..........................................................................................................................9
Service...........................................................................................................................................9
Support Activities..............................................................................................................................9
Firm Infrastructure......................................................................................................................10
HR Management..........................................................................................................................10
Technology Development............................................................................................................10
Procurement................................................................................................................................10
Marketing Promotional Plan................................................................................................................10
Marketing Objectives.......................................................................................................................11
Marketing Communication Mix.......................................................................................................11

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Digital Marketing Strategy for E-Bay................................................................................................12
Digital Marketing Plan & Budget.....................................................................................................13
Conclusion...........................................................................................................................................14
References...........................................................................................................................................15

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Brief Background
E-Bay is one of the largest multinational e-commerce companies which were founded in the year
1995 by Pierre Omidyer with its headquarters at San Jose, California. E-bay is world’s ninth largest e-
commerce companies by revenue and is one of the front runners who have changed the online
shopping landscape. E-bay started its operation s in Australia in the year 1999 and since then has
swayed the market by storm. People perceive E-Bay as a reliable company which provides great
quality products at a reasonable price with fast delivery. The company employees more than 12,000
employees and earned a revenue of US $8.97 Billion in the year 2016(eBay, 2017). Another
astonishing part about E-bay is that it started with selling used products but later it forayed in the
market by selling new products. E-Bay works with a marketplace model rather than inventory model
in online selling, this helps the company in saving the costs by holding no inventory and thus it helps
the company to keep a close tab on the suppliers. One of the high points of E-Bay is its sellers, it has
a good qualifying criteria set up for its sellers who are listed on the website (Daim, Brand & Lin,
2013)
The purpose of the report here is to focus on the research methods used to identify the target
market of E-Bay and provide insight on the current value analysis of the company, further, an
analysis of the current marketing strategies adopted by the company will be conducted along the
marketing and promotional plan for E-bay. The report will also help to analyse the brand value of the
company and the perception it has in the minds of its Australian customers.

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Research Methods
Marketing research is the process of collecting and gathering data about the companies in order to
assess the target market, find the underlying customer value about the company, gather relevant
information about the competitors and use the data collected to design the future value proposition
for the company. Marketing research helps in targeting the right set of customers with the right
marketing strategy and deliver them the product and services they desire the most. It basically sets
the tune of the company in consensus with the needs of the consumers (Churchill & Lacobucci,
2006). In order to collect the data, there are primarily two types of methods which can be used:
Primary Data Collection
This can be understood as the process of gathering new information which is highly specific and in
accordance with the objective of the research methodology. The goals which are identified by the
organization are further broken down to fit in the research process to achieve the intended

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outcomes. Surveys, focus groups and questionnaire are a good primary source of collecting the data.
The process of collecting primary data is lengthy, time consuming and costly, but at the same time it
helps in achieving fresh insight about the company product or the services (Belk, 2007)
Questionnaire are an excellent method of collecting primary data, but it is often difficult to design at
the very first go before creating an acceptable questionnaire which would lead to highly specific
results. Questionnaire is both open ended and closed ended; both types of questionnaire have their
relative importance. If the company is looking for specific information, bullet points they go for
closed ended questionnaire and when the company wants detailed view points of the customers and
are interested in detailed information, they go for open ended questionnaire. It can be both mailed
to the sample population or can be collected personally by the sample population (Kuhfeld, 2005)
Interview is another method of primary data collection which is used to develop an understanding of
the underlying reasons and motivation for people’s attitudes, preferences and behaviour. Interviews
have with it an option of either conducting them on one to one basis or in a group, another
advantage of interviewing is that it can be conducted in any environment wherever the candidate is
comfortable; it does away with the environmental bias. The interview can be structured,
unstructured and semi-structured depending upon the objective of the research (Sekaran & Bougie,
2016)
Another contemporary mode of primary data collection which is highly targeted, specific and
information oriented is Focus group interviews. It is the type of interview which is conducted by a
good trained moderator in a highly non –structured but natural manner with a small number of
respondents. It is the moderator who leads the discussion and tries to collect the information
relevant to the objective. The prime purpose of the focus group is to gather insight by listening to a
group of people from having highly target talk about the specific issues of interest (Bryman & Bell,
2015)
All these methods are a collective source of information to provide information about its target
market and how customers perceive E-bay and product offerings. It helps E-Bay to design strategies
in and around its customer base.
Secondary Research Methods
Secondary research methods or data collection method is the one in which the information is
already collected and is available online for the use of the companies. It is an already prepared data
and is available for the access of the companies (Hair & Lukas, 2014). It helps in aiding the current

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research process and saves a lot of time and money for the organization. There are two sources of
secondary data collection; internal database and external database. Internal database can be
achieved from the already existing customer database, sales records and financial information. The
source of external database is trade journals, professional associations, government publications,
commercial data and national and international enterprise. E-Bay used both internal and external
data to understand the target market, their preference, likes and dislikes etc. Online reviews of the
customers on the website are a good source of internal secondary data collection (Hair, 2015)
Collectively both Primary and Secondary source of data collection provides in depth insight to E-Bay
to assess its target market, its value proposition, the attitude, behaviour and perception of the
consumers and the result of its marketing strategies.
Current Value Analysis
E-Bay as one of the largest Multinational e-commerce companies has set itself apart than its
competitors. E-Bay focuses on benefitting the society and facilitates transactions in the marketplace;
it basically provides platforms for the sellers and buyers across the globe. The company was formed
initially to facilitate the sale of used products, but after understanding the pulse of the market they
moved into the conventional mode of selling new products on its website Customers perception of
E-Bay is that of a e-commerce company which is characterized by :
Good quality of Products: E-Bay ensures and maintains a good quality of product by carefully
selecting the suppliers who are listed on its portal. It also has special incentives for sellers who are
being rated exceptionally good by the customers based on the reviews.
Wide range of Products: E-Bay tries to offer depth in its existing product line and keep adding new
sellers on the board with wide range of products.
Excellent service quality: E-Bay believes in having customer centric approach and it treats all the
customers same irrespective of their ticket size. The mission of E-Bay is to create an online
environment of delightful shopping.
Adhering to the SLA in timeline: E-Bay has set up a Service Level Agreement with the sellers listed
on the platform and does its best to adhere to timelines it has promised to its buyers.

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Value Chain Analysis
Value chain analysis can be understood as a strategic tool which helps to identify the business
activities which are important to create value and competitive advantage to the business (Miles,
2015) the diagram below shows the framework of Value chain analysis:
Primary Activities
Inbound Logistics
It refers to the ways in which E-Bay acquires and stores the raw materials used for the business. E-
Bay acquires servers for its data and support, materials for office supplies and other technological
products which help in business operations. E-Bay achieves economies of scale owing to its massive
business operations and it is one of the major sources of its inbound logistic. E-Bay also makes
strategic relationship with its suppliers to tighten its inbound logistics (Mudambi & Puck, 2016)
Operations
E-Bay is an e-commerce company and hence its operations move around technology. The range of e
bay technologies and services are divided in three platforms:
Marketplace: It refers to the online marketplace and it has more than 700 million listing on its portal
at any given time.
Stat Hub: It is a platform which facilitates the buying and selling of tickets to the concerts, games,
theatre shows and so on.
Classifieds: It is a collection of brands which is listed on the portal.

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The complete range of business operations of E-Bay Australia are:
 Registering the sellers on the website
 Bidding by buyers for a product offered
 Successful bid by the buyer
 Buyer paying to the bank via Paypal and other options
 Notification to e-bay by the bank on the buyer purchase.
 Notification to the seller by e-bay on the amount transfer
 Delivery of product from seller to buyer
 Acknowledgement to e-bay by the buyer
 Passing seller account to the bank by e-bay
 Seller getting paid by the bank
Outbound Logistics
Outbound logistics in the case of E-Bay refers to its practise of delivering the products to its
customers. E-Bay does not deal with the retailers and wholesalers due to its business model. The
responsibility lies on the seller to ship the product to the consumers. The company does not have a
logistic team of its own and is hence dependent on the third party vendors. This it has to keep a
close tab on the third party vendor. Recently the company got in partnership with Uber Rush for
efficient shipment of the products.
Marketing & Sales
The marketing and sales expense of E-Bay has reduced significantly in the last few years. In the year
2015 there was a decrease by 7% in the expenses in comparison to the FY 2014. The company had a
solid advantage over its competitors when PayPal was with E-Bay, but after the separation the
company is on its own and relies on the tools of social media for its marketing and sales promotion.
Service
E-Bay has a +1800 number which users can call 24*7 to address their concerns, query or grievances
to the customer care department. The customer care team is well trained to handle and manage the
concerns of the customers and are well versed with the concept of service quality. At the same time,
E-Bay encourages sellers to give great customer services in order to manage a positive reputation for
the company.

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Support Activities
These are the activities which help as support system for the primary activities performed by E-Bay
Firm Infrastructure
E-Bay is an online marketplace connecting buyers and sellers and hence its firm infrastructure
consists of a central customer data warehouse to store all the information. It also uses cloud
technology to store the information on the customers and seller data.
HR Management
E-Bay offers unique benefits to its employees. E-Bay believes in the reasoning that if you keep the
employees happy they will treat the customers happy. By offering various incentives and fringe
benefits to the employees an environment of Harmony is created at the workplace.
Technology Development
E-Bay keeps investing on its cloud platforms and spends lavishly on its servers. A huge amount of
money is spent to keep the servers safe and prevent any digital theft and so on. The business of E-
Bay is technology dependent and hence it spends sizeable revenue towards the tech development of
its infrastructure.
Procurement
E-Bay does not have followed an inventory based model and hence it does not use warehouse to
store inventory. It though keeps a tab on the sellers listed on its platform through an efficient
supplier chain selection to take care of its other procurement needs.
Marketing Promotional Plan
E-Bay is a well-established name in the Australia market and has earned a reputation of a reliable e-
commerce platform since its inception in the year 1995. The company has maintained its position in
the Australian market by providing efficient services to its customers with assured quality. E-Bay
focuses on building communities through its portal, unlike other competitors which are focussed on

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the product. Other competitors like Alibaba and Amazon are now entering into the market of selling
used products, moving on the lines of E-Bay. It has established some marketing objectives for itself
which E-Bay wants to achieve by its promotional mix strategies. The marketing objectives identified
by E-Bay are:
Marketing Objectives
 Increase the traffic on the E-Bay website by a margin of 20%
 Increase the unique customer visit on the website by 10%
 Increase the customer retention
 Increase the sales in the FY 2017-18 by 10%
 Increase the likes on the Social media pages by 15%
 Add more product depth in the fashion and lifestyle segment
 Create stories around the customer satisfaction on social media
 Increase the conversation and engagement on Social Media
 Online reputation management
In order to achieve the following objective, it is extremely important to understand the
segmentation, targeting and positioning of E-Bay in accordance to its marketing mix
Parent Company EBay Incorporation
Category Website-Online Shopper
Sector IT& Technology
Tagline Whatever it is, you can get it on E-Bay; Buy it, sell
it, love it
USP One of the most trusted e-commerce companies
providing online auction and shopping
opportunities.
Segment Online users (Internet users)
Target Group 16-60 Years (Age demographics, Urban
population, internet population)
Positioning It is positioned as an online market place which
provides opportunity of shopping through fixed
pricing, classified and auction.
Marketing Communication Mix
It primarily comprises of 8 modes of communication for the target customer or its audience
Advertising: It is paid form of non-personal communication targeted to the audience. Different
channels used can be online and offline such as social media, TV, print, web etc. (Andrews & Shimp,
2017)

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Sales Promotion: It is kind of a short term incentive offered to the customers to boost the sales (Fill
& Turnbull, 2016)
Events & Experiences: These are company created; owned, designed and executed events which
facilitate brand interaction with the customers (Kitchen & Burgmann, 2015)
Public Relations: It is direct communication to the customers, government, and companies etc. in
order to protect and build the image of the company (Blakeman, 2017)
Direct Marketing: Email, newsletters online promotions, is the form of direct marketing used.
Interactive Marketing: Interactive marketing is one of the new forms of marketing companies use
these days; they build conversation in and around the company and drive engagement through it
(Chen & XIe, 2008)
Word of Mouth Marketing: It is a form of communication between people who promote the
company after having a good experience (Mangold & Faulds, 2009)
Personal Selling: Personnel selling are not applicable to E-Bay, but it refers to face to face interaction
for the selling.
A Marketing communication plan is developed combining all or some of these modes of
communication, in the present era , online tools of marketing more sense primarily because of 2
reasons:
The target audience is available online
The business model promotes online communication.
Digital Marketing Strategy for E-Bay
The total population if Australia is 24 Million (2016) and its online population is 20 Million. According
to the target group defined E-Bay wants to reach to 80 percent of its online audience, which comes
to roughly 16 million reach within a year. The reach volume is decided on the basis of E-Bay’s
penetration in Australia and the futuristic marketing strategy. In order to reach an online population
of 16 million the company has to use Facebook, twitter, Instagram, mobile marketing, affiliate
marketing, blogging and other online shopping channels (Tsetsi & Rains, 2017)

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In a recent study conducted on the Australian online market, it was noticed that people are spending
an increasing amount of time on the internet and they use online tool for socializing, gathering
information and shopping. Also, with the increasing penetration of Smartphones it makes more
sense for E-Bay to do mobile targeting to its target customers. One of the recent studies claimed that
an individual on an average interacts with his phone 2000 times in a day, thus it makes more sense
to target them on the go (Turban, Whiteside, King and Cutland, 2017)
Digital Marketing Plan & Budget
Platform Utility/Purpose Budget
Facebook 3 New posts on a daily basis,
revolving around the
information on products,
customer success stories and
posts for tagging people who
needs some particular product.
This will facilitate engagement
and conversation with E-Bay’s
targeted audience and drive
traffic on to the website and
increase the likes and fans on
its Facebook page
200,000 AUD
Instagram 6 Posts daily spread across
evening, afternoon and night.
The post will be focussed on
new product listed on the
website and customer reviews.
Instagram is rapidly gaining
popularity among the youth
and hence, it will give a boost
to its online presence
50,000 AUD
Twitter Getting influencer on Board
with E-Bay, Basking the success
of Thor using Chris Hemsworth
for influencer marketing on
twitter along with Hugh
Jackman and Nicole Kidman.
The promotion of E-Bay on
twitter by the influencer will
help in getting their fans
interested in E-Bay
100,000 AUD
Blogging Bloggers to write story on the
success of E-Bay along with the
customer journey and shopping
experience. This is highly
targeted content which will be
pushed to the customer bucket
made by E-Bay. These bloggers
will be In-house bloggers who
20,000 AUD

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will promote the blogs through
back link in sponsored content
on other websites.
You tube Create YouTube ads on
customer shopping experience.
4 advertisement in an year and
fixed mask head on the
YouTube homepage during the
holiday season
$200,000
Affiliate Marketing Giving commission to other e-
commerce website on every
sale which gets converted when
the user is diverted on the e-
bay portal and makes a sale.
The targeted sites will be travel,
health, men , shopping, food,
entertainment and others
Commission Based
Mobile Marketing Pushing regular notification
through the E-Bay application
TV One Ad/ Year during the
holiday season. The Ad will be
based on the concept of
families gifting to each other
through e-bay and e-bay giving
a personal touch to the orders
and spreading happiness and
smiles around the family
$500,000 / Depending on the
actual during the holiday
season
Print Magazine and daily ads, once
every month, promoting big
billion day, sales promotion etc.
$400,000
Radio Ads With a frequency of 4 radio ads
every day during morning and
evening hours, the purpose will
be to promote its sales
discount, offers, marketing
campaigns and so on
$100,000 Annually
Conclusion
E-Bay is one of the earliest online e-commerce companies which made a mark for itself in the
shopping space; it had a very unique model in the beginning which facilitated shopping through
auction and bidding process. Later the company moved to selling new products in order to gain a
larger market share and also because it understood the pulse of its business audience. Currently E-
Bay is doing a fantastic job, its revenue is increasing and it is relying more and more on the online
tools of marketing for its sales promotion. In the report a detailed marketing communication plan for

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E-Bay has been mentioned which typically explains the rationale for using each of the available
platform in the most efficient manner. E-Bay Australia is looking for deeper penetration in the age
group of 22-34, as company’s product categories are better suited for this age group. The company
has to focus on online reputation management to maintain and build its brand image in the market
and give a tough fight to its biggest competitor Amazon
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