At first, eBay’s global activities was a small company and restricted its business operations only in US, the advancement of information technology worldwide enabled eBay to open new branches in other countries. This move to join commerce assisted the company to increase its global activities adversely. This is because its businesses spurt at high rate in Europe, Asia and America. The decision for eBay to join international marketing through the use of online selling was a strategic move for the company. This is because its international business activities had greatly multiplied since then. The company have established numerous sites straddling the global market as far as Brazil, China and Germany.
The good performance of eBay has made it to be one of the leading electronic marketers in the world. Its good performances are highly dependent on its strategically designed playbook. These eBay playbooks consist of hundreds of WebPages of collection of wisdoms of all eBay worldwide mangers that span from America, Asia and Europe. These playbooks are updated regularly. The playbook contains the formations that assist managers in their day-to-day eBay business activities. They contain information on online marketing, management and community outreach.
The company through online selling has been very successful in opening new sites outside US to operate across Asia and Europe. The company started by expanding into Germany and China before moving to other places. Today Germany eBay is by far the largest international site with an approximate sale of $70 billion annually. This is a much higher sale compared to the sale realized from US of $ 20 billion. The good performance of ebay in Germany has enabled eBay to spread to other parts in Europe such as United Kingdom, Netherlands and Italy (http://www.ebay.com)
The good performances of ebay in the global market can also being attributed to its efficient marketing strategies. In the past eBay used to concentrate all its advertisement on Television only. They realised that this method of creating awareness for their services was not very effective. Therefore they changed their advertising methodology to include creating awareness of their services and products through the use of Internet. This proved very effective and nowadays eBay is heavily advertising their services and products through the Internet.
Good advertisement through the Internet has therefore greatly boosted the good performance of the company. This is because this awareness has enabled the company to acquire many more customers worldwide. The only place that they have not being very successful in their business is in china and Japan due to similar stiff completion from similar companies such as Yahoo which spread earlier than eBay to these areas. Therefore by the time eBay was spreading to Japan they were already well established.
The eBay have a very efficient human resource department that helped the company establish an effectual mechanism to overcome cross-cultural conflict. eBay usually localises their business activities to fit into the culture of their area of operation. For example, in Germany the eBay is generally configured to fit into Germany’s culture. All the conversations are in Germany. This is also the case in other places such as China and Italy. This helps the company to be taken as a local company and not to be taken as an American Brand. Therefore all the countries that host the eBay services take eBay as their community’s Brand. This strategy has enabled the company to perform very well in the international market as it has enabled the company overcome the cross-cultural cultures and cross cultural communication barriers that are common in international marketing.
When eBay establishes it site in a country the management at first concentrates all their efforts on marketing their services to the locals through the use of Internet and other advertising means. This enables the company to bring more customers to the site. There after, the company embarks on perfecting detailed category management or rolling out pay pals. This helps to enhance and ease the company’s activities greatly. (http://www.ebay.com)
Other reasons why eBay has been that successful in its local and international markets are its easy URL and efficient electronic money transfer methods such as pay pal, E-gold and others. This is because Internet businesses require a lot more than just a storefront on the Internet to be successful. One of the main things an Internet business would require is an easy URL to remember. If you have a long drown out URL few people will remember it and they will more than likely visit a more memorable site. Therefore that’s why eBay has adapted an easy URL for their customers to easily remember it. Good Internet business also requires some type of shopping cart so that customers can select items and continue shopping on your site as well as get an idea of how much they are spending.
These facilities are well supplied by eBay to facilitate smooth shopping of their customers. Another thing Internet retailers may need is a service that allows them to accept credit card for instance Pay Pal or other merchant account companies. It’s very hard to run a business online if your only accepted method of payment is checks and money orders more people are using credit cards to pay for purchases online or electronic checks or virtual cash like E-gold. If you equip your business with ability to accept at these types of payments you will have a better chance of people actually making purchases from your website. This has being well addressed by all eBay sites by establishing pay pal facilities to boost their online sale in all their sites worldwide.
Being online has as well, big advantages; from my point of view these are the two main advantages: These are the Technological differences; buyers of one country can afford to buy high technology products at cheaper price than in their own country. This is due to the different developments of the markets. The other one is the caused by the difference of currencies; people from the U.K. or U.S.A. are able to buy at a cheaper price than in their own country due to strengthens of their currency. Therefore online buying allows customers to buy products at a cheap price, which is what majority of online shoppers are looking for. This is why eBay has been successful in selling thousands of jewellery, watches and electronics such as computers software.