Ebay - The Online Market Place

The major purposes of ebay are to buy and sell products by a community of individuals and small businesses. Ebay has a presents in 37 markets including the United States and the UK.

The target audience of ebay is anyone who has access to the internet and the ability to buy goods over the internet. I feel that it has such a diverse target audience is because of the wide variety of precuts which are auctioned. Ebay describe its audience as ‘unique’ and in February 2008 it had 13.2 million members.

The auction process works by:
1. You register with ebay
2. The seller creates an advert for an item and lists the item on the auction site. In the item listing the seller specifies the length of the auction and the minimum bid they will accept for that item (reserve).
3. A potential buyer selects the item and specifies the maximum amount they will pay, this must be greater than the seller’s minimum bid.
4. Ebay informs the highest bidder that they have won the bis, then the seller is responsible for arranging payment, when payment is received the seller send the item.

Ebay fulfils its purpose as an online market place because it has a record amount of buyers and sellers, their visitor numbers speak for themselves when asking how successful the site is. There are a number of benefits and limitations of the service. The benefits are that you are able to buy almost any item at a reasonable price, and you can sell items which you don’t want anymore. The limitations are that not all buyers or sellers are genuine and that there is a selling fee for selling your goods. In addition you are only selling to people that have access to the internet and are willing to buy goods in this way.

Ebay is so successful as a shopping model because it has made local small markets into global ones at a low cost to the seller. People like buying used and collectible items at car boot and garage sales, however, has now made this available to almost everybody in the world 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and can be done anywhere.