How Is Ebay Different From Others

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

EBay is one of the today’s most popular and global online market . This public limited company was founded during dot-com bubble by Pierre Omidyar, a French-born American Iranian entrepreneur and philanthropist on September 3, 1995 in San Jose, California, USA. Since eBay's founding in 1995 it has become the world's best biggest place to buy and sell, a community of hundreds of millions of regular people, small businesses, and even big businesses from all of the seven continents. Large variety of items can be found in ebay small materials to the parts of the planes can be found in 1st hand or in 2nd hand also costing just a dollar to millions of a dollar and in which the price is changed every time. Today, eBay is most successful into the new international global markets using the internet.

Objectives & Mission

It has been running with various slogans till now though it has many slogans it only one objective is to provide trading platform where anyone can sell or buy things in the best price. . Some of its slogans used are "World's Online Marketplace", "Connecting buyers and sellers globally", "Whatever it is, you can get it on eBay", "Buy it, sell it, love it", "Buy it New, Buy it Now", "When it's on your mind, it's on eBay".

Services and Features

Buying & Selling

There are millions of sellers around the world who have listed millions of items like collectibles, decor, appliances, computers, furnishings, equipment, domain names, vehicles, and other miscellaneous or even products & services. Generally, everything can be sold as long as they are not illegal and agree eBay Prohibited and Restricted Items policy.

Buys can buy those listed items by two ways; Buy It now & Online Auction. In a Buy It Now listing, the first buyer willing to pay the seller's price gets the item. In Auction type selling, the bid starts at fixed price and remains for certain days. Buyers then place bids on the item. When the listing ends, the buyer with the highest bid wins. Whatever the way is, buyers can get them at compared and low rates.

Meeting Place, not a store

eBay doesn’t sell its own goods. All of the goods on eBay are sold and delivered by third party sellers that are neither employed by, nor have any other relationship with, eBay itself. It has just provided a platform to meet the buyers and sellers around the world.

Shopping & Collecting

Immense variety of things can be found for sale on Ebay, so many members have found that eBay is one of the best place for shopping. Since we can see lots of the same item side-by-side in various conditions and know what each one sold or is selling for, eBay gives you insight into the real market value. Not only this, eBay is the world's largest marketplace for rare, discontinued, collectible, or hard-to-find items, no matter what the type or price.

Website - International

Physically there is no any eBay store, though it has its headquarters in San Jose, California to offer its service online. But now, can be operated from several cities and countries. They have also launched more than 20 international sites for consumer’s compatibility.

International Sites of eBay

www.ebay.co.uk (UK)

www.ebay.com (USA)

www.ebay.au (Australia)

www.gittigidiyor.com (Turkey)

www.ebay.es (Spain)

www.ruten.com.tw (Taiwan)

www.auction.co.kr (South Korea)

www.mercadolibre.com.ar (Argentina)

Free for buyers and inexpensive for sellers

It’s free to become an eBay member to shop or purchase goods from eBay sellers. However, sellers pay a minimal amount to list their items for sale and small percentage of value when the item is sold. There are no any other extra costs or monthly fees charged by eBay.

Eco-Friendly

Millions of second hand goods are bought and sold at eBay. If eBay wasn’t there, then those goods have been gone into landfills more resource-intensive recycling programs. . Some of these goods include consumer electronics items like computer parts and mobile phones that release toxic substances once they're discarded and exposed to the environment.

Socially responsible

Because eBay eliminates middlemen and lowers barriers to buying and selling, potters in rural Mexico and bead weavers in central Asia can sell hand-made goods directly and inexpensively to a massive global audience. This brings new economic opportunities to developing areas and increases cultural understanding between populations. eBay has become one of the world's most interesting and exciting trans-national ambassadors.

Seller Ratings

After the product is bought, buyers can rate the seller in each of these categories; Profitability, Customer Service, Communication, Ease of Use, Recommendation; with a score one 1 to 5 stars. Unlike the overall feedback rating, these ratings are anonymous; neither sellers nor other users learn how individual buyers rated the seller. The listings of sellers with a rating of 4.3 or below in any of the four rating categories appear lower in search results.

Charity Auctions

eBay allows sellers to donate a portion of their auction proceeds to a charity of the seller's choice. The program is called eBay Giving Works in the US, and eBay for Charity in the UK. eBay provides a partial refund of seller fees for items sold through charity auctions. As of March 4, 2010, $154 million has been raised for U.S. nonprofits by the eBay Community since eBay Giving Works began in 2003.

Specialty Sites

eBay maintains a number of specialty sites. eBay Pulse, for example, provides information about popular search terms, trends, and most-watched items. Other eBay community content includes the customer service, discussion boards, groups, answer center, chat rooms, and reviews and guides. eBay has a robust mobile offering, including SMS alerts, a WAP site, Java ME clients, an Android OS application and an Apple iPhone application available in certain markets.

Trusted Payment Systems

eBay use Paypal as its payment system so buys could pay sellers. PayPal is the faster, safer way to pay and get paid online, via mobile devices and in store. The service allows people to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. Other than Paypal, eBay also uses BillMeLater service.

Skype

eBay acquired Skype in 2005 and expanded its customer base to more than 480 million registered users worldwide.In November 2009, eBay sold a majority stake in Skype, retaining a minority investment in the company in order to focus on its core e-commerce and payments businesses.

Ebay – Different From Others

Today’s most of the commercial online global sites are usually the online stores where buyer’s can buy only the brand new goods and used ones in some as well. For example, Amazon.com is an online store where the stuff being sold is brand new and owns and is responsible for all the items sold on their site. But eBay is totally different than this. Its an online auction site where items solds are usually used and it does not own the things that are being sold or auctioned on its site. Not only this, eBay got over 20 international sites to run its business globally.

Unlike other sites, eBay doesn’t allow the sellers to list restricted and prohibited things like animals or pets. However, pet supplies are still allowed. Other prohibited items include tobacco products, alcohols, drugs, ammunitions, illegal goods including security cards, passports, licenses, human parts, fortune-telling and witchcraft-related services, sexually oriented materials. Despite of this regional laws and regulations may apply to the seller or the buyer.

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Coelopleurus exquisitus

Source: en.wikipedia.org/ Coelopleurus_exquisitus

Unique and unusual products like Coelopleurus exquisitus sea urchin, military vehicles, and items of food are also sold in eBay . Regarding website (www.ebay.com), the site is totally different from others in aspects like the contents, designs, functions and steps of making purchases or listing items or even graphics.

Steps to make Online Purchase

Find the product

First, we have to look for our product. This can be done by either searching them using keyboard at search bar at the top of the homepage or by browsing them manually through the different categories at the left of the page.

Read the Description

Once we find our product, click on it to view its description. There we can know about its quality, price, offers, product type and value, free services and others. If there are still questions on our mind, then we can find answers by clicking the Ask a question link.

Review the seller's Feedback

Seller’s business reputation at eBay can be viewed by looking at his or her Feedback score at the same description window and by reading the comments left by previous buyers so we be sure that this is a seller we feel we can trust.

Bid or Buy It Now

In the description window, there is an option to buy the product either Buy it Now or Bid. The Bids are available till the listings ends while Buy it Now takes to the payment screen where we are required to complete the further steps of payment. We can also add different items to the cart to buy all them together.

Pay for the item

Once we won the item at Bidding or bought at Buy It Now, we should send the payment to seller within 3 days. To pay with one of the electronic payment methods offered by the seller, click the Pay Now button in the listing or email notification. If we are picking up the item, we can pay by any method the seller accepts (including cash).

With the core, unique and important services and features, eBay has been enormously growing in the recent years. It the global online site where user feel secure as it maintains four copies of most of its databases. The site currently has about 600 million listings and about 204 million registered users and users trade about $2100 worth of goods on the site every second. In 2011, the total value of goods sold on eBay was $68.6 billion. Moreover, this site averages more than 1 billion page views per day. Every week, 10 terabytes of new storage are added every week to cover the new transactions. This leading and succeeding market has brought together millions of people every day on a local, national and international basis through an array of websites that focus on commerce, payments and communications.