1- Contrast eBay’s original business model with its latest proposed business model? eBay’s leadership unveiled a three-year revival plan. eBay has begun to move away from its origins as an online flea market, and instead is starting to look more like an outlet mall where retailers sell out-of-season, overstocked, refurbished, or discontinued merchandise, and like low price bulk retailer Costco, where the inventory is somewhat fluid but everything is a good deal.
2- What are the problems that eBay is currently facing? How is eBay trying to solve these problems? eBay is not facing any current problems, but they had in the past two horrible problems with PayPal and Skype when they took wrong dictions.
3- Are the solutions eBay is seeking to implement good solutions? Why or why not? Are they any other solutions that eBay should consider? Yes, because they still the most successful Internet auction business. Hundreds of thousands of people support themselves by selling on eBay and many millions more use eBay to supplement their income. During the holiday season, eBay is often the most visited site on the Web. The solution that eBay should consider helping to avoid fraudulent purchases, eBay could act as a mediator between sellers and buyers, eBay could put rules stating that the buyer must pay the amount of the item to eBay once the item has been sent to the buyer, the payment will be delivered to the seller.
4- Who are eBay’s top three competitors online, and how will eBay’s new strategy help it compete? Will eBay be providing a differentiated service to customers? eBay’s top three competitors are Amazon, Google and Yahoo. eBay’s new strategy is to weave many of these purchases all together in a new open source commerce platform called X.commerce, which will offer a wide variety of services enabling merchants to more easily integrate online and offline commerce efforts, of course this new strategy will help eBay to compete with their competitors because they already providing a differentiated service to customer and they are fully satisfied.
