[Writer’s Name]
Business Overview
eBay was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States of America. It is involved in the business of providing online services and tools to help consumers in online and mobile commerce and payments internationally. eBay can be categorized under the Catalog and Mail Order Houses, and has operations in over 30 countries. It has about 30,000 full time employees currently working under its name. The company made $11.5 billion in revenue in the first three quarters of 2013, and $2 billion in net income in the same period.
Its share price is 49.30 (as at Nov 27, 6:24PM EST) and 1.29B in shares outstanding. These shares have been taken from the most recently filed annual report.
Business Summary Section
eBay has developed into a multi-pronged business venture having multiple aspects and wings to its business. It has a marketplace segment which operates the ecommerce platform eBay.com. This website can be categorized as an online auction and shopping website wherein people and businesses buy and sell a wide variety of goods and services globally.
It also owns vertical shopping sites like StubHub, Half.com, Motors and Fashion; classified websites like Kijiji, LoQuo, BilBasen, Den Bla Avis, mobile.de, Gumtree, eBay Annunci, etc. It even provides advertising services. This segment of their business includes Milo which helps search good at local retailers; RedLaser which facilitates mobile commerce and WHI which offers an electronic catalog of car parts and accessories. Then there is the payment segment which offers payment and settlement services for merchants and consumers within eBay and other websites, under the name of PayPal. PayPal allows businesses and people to transfer and receive payments online, even with mobile devices; there is Bill Me Later which allows US merchants and consumers to offer and receive credit at the point of sale respectively; Zong allows users to purchase digital goods with their mobile devices and charge it to their phone bill, and there are many more.
Lastly, they have a GSI segment which offers an ecommerce suite for enterprise clients dealing in general merchandise like toys, apparel, sports goods, personal care products and home making products. Additionally they also provide marketing services via a digital agency that provides services in mobile advertising, enterprise email marketing, affiliate marketing and analytics. They even have an open platform for developers and merchants.
eBay is an American multinational company having localized sites in many countries within Asia Pacific (Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Phillippines, South Korea); Europe (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, United Kingdom) and North America (Canada and United States).
The key executives of eBay include Founder and Chairman, Pierre M. Omidyar; Chief Executive Officer, President and Director, John J Donahoe; Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance, Robert H. Swan; Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Elizabeth L. Axelrod, and President of Global eBay Marketplaces Business Unit, Devin N. Wenig.
The main competitors of eBay include Amazon, Etsy and Bonanza. It has been found that instead of the giants of the industry, eBay has chances of being assaulted by startups, which are operating in either one or more industries that eBay is involved in.
Recent developments in eBay include its PayPal unit paying $100,000 in prize money for Battle Hack Series, a global hackathon, to a Moscow team for developing an application called Donate Now. The series took place at the San Jose headquarters and 10 teams of developers fought it out for the grand prize. Donate Now uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to enable users to make donations instantly via their mobile devices without having to fill out lengthy forms. The team comprised Sergey Pronin, Alexander Balabna, Bayram Annakov, and Oksana Tretiakova.
In another news, eBay partnered with celebrity home-maker, Martha Stewart in collaboration with Living Omnimedia to introduce the Martha Stewart American Made Market which will feature exclusively on eBay.
eBay also reported a strong 14% increase in its third quarter earnings for 2013 compared to the same period of 2012. eBay Enterprise made $238 million in revenue in the third quarter, showing a 5% increase. Commerce Technologies made $787 million in Merchandise Sales portraying a 13% hike. The company hopes that its omnichannel product portfolio, including eBay Inc. assets, to be used by merchants looking for opportunities to expand their businesses while meeting the needs of the consumer. eBay Enterprise launched four brands under Commerce Technologies during the third quarter.
