Introduction – use headers / subtitles through out
I will mark grammar problems and you will have to correct them.
Ebay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar and is currently headquartered in San Jose, California (Bjornsson, 2001). It was originally meant to be an online “flea market” selling goods for individuals. After selling the first item listed, a broken laser printer, Pierre began to expand the website. In 1995 and 1996, eBay began to hire its first employees and in January of 1997 the site hosted eight times as many auctions than of the entire previous year (Bjornsson, 2001). In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder introduced Meg Whitman to eBay. Whitman created a senior staff team from various companies who had vast business experience, so they could create a strong future for the company. This quickly led to eBay being established as a company that was in the business of connecting people rather than selling them things. In 1998 the company went public.
In 2002, the group at eBay began to diversify, starting with the purchase of IBazar in February of 2002 (The history of eBay, 2011). In that same year, eBay purchased PayPal. PayPal led to become the flagship of the eBay brand and surpassed revenues of the original auction website. PayPal has enabled consumers and merchants to send and receive payments online and through mobile devices.
Ebay has, over the years, created an international person to person trading community on the Internet. In this way, “bidders” and merchants are concentrated where sellers are allowed to list items for sale for a fee, while the buyers can search and bid on items of interest for no extra cost. The company’s payments segment offers payment and settlement services for consumers and merchants on and off eBay websites and other merchant websites. The items on the site are organized by categories, where each type of auction has its own category. This created an environment that made it easy for sellers to sell online as an international marketplace, with various tools and techniques provided by eBay. Ebay has globalized the traditional trading system, which had originally been directed in garage sales, auctions, flea markets and more, by using the internet. This has also expedited the process for easy exploration for buyers and allowed merchants to immediately list an item for sale within minutes of registering.
Today, eBay is headquartered in San Jose, California and is concentrated on two main businesses. PayPal is the payment processing system of the Ebay Corporation and is used by many others as a safe payment system as well. Currently, eBay's position as an online retailer, ecommerce website, and payment processing system is constantly changing.
Recently, growth has started to ease, with most of the overall growth coming from the payment processing systems and the current process of reorganization and changes in the marketplace are making merchants think twice. Also, some of the decay in the marketplace, is due in fact to increasing competition from start-ups, but most notably Amazon.com and Google. The financial crisis also took a large toll on the revenue of the corporation.
The biggest competitors to eBay are not only Amazon and Google, but startups as well. The changes implemented during John Donahoe's tenure of the shift in fees and rules to an increased orientation toward high-volume, fixed-price retail channel selling have created holes in fragments of eBay's traditional community even as the competition surrounding eBay begins to strengthen. This has also created a market that is highly oriented towards buyers rather than sellers. This has led to sellers looking for alternatives and has given an edge to startups trying to enter this market.
Amazon has been declared the world’s largest retailer. The website was founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, and was originally planned to be a marketplace for books (Web Book Giant Fighting Off Competitors, 1997). However, the site was not expected to become profitable for at least four or five years, scaring investors. Despite this, after the dot com bubble burst, Amazon was able to survive and strive past competitors to become a solid retailer.
Amazon has since grown to serve consumers through its retail websites and tends to focus on selection, price, and convenience. Amazon has offered programs that enable merchants to sell their specialized products on its websites. Amazon has also implemented programs through various sub websites. One example of this is Amazon Kindle, which is a program created by Amazon that allows authors to publish their own e-books for customers around the world. Additional programs implemented by Amazon also allow people to publish music, films, apps and more things to publish and sell on the marketplace. Amazon currently operates in two parts: North America and international. Amazon has been designed to allow the company to sell millions of items by Amazon as well as by individual merchants to people across the globe. The marketplace has expanded from being originally an online bookstore to a vast marketplace that sells items in many different categories.
Amazon has recently been diversifying its operations. This has led to Amazon creating its own line of electronics, by manufacturing and selling e-readers as well as tablets. Just this year, Amazon had purchased Double Helix Games as well as Iconology Inc. Amazon.com, the leading marketplace for books has created a stir for authors, as many want have access to the vast amount of consumers Amazon has (Pres,2012). Currently, Amazon is planning to cut prices for its books to cut out competition it has. Its main competitors for the book marketplace are e-book sites, who are scrambling to increase their selection. Barnes and Nobles has also been downsizing thanks to the efforts of Amazon. Amazon has demonstrated itself to become one of the most powerful internet businesses today.
Despite Amazon and eBay having similar concepts, they are set up and organized in completely different ways. First examining eBay, it has a much more user-oriented base. EBay creates an environment where individual sellers can list items for a listing fee as well as a final value fee. Sellers may also face numerous other fees for special requests, such as bold letters, etc. Also, eBay is much less organized, as it is an auction based website and the sellers have to create their own listings. This gives buyers a chance to compare multiple listings of the same item by price, description or the photos provided. The market is auction type; meaning buyer must place bids and wait until an auction ends to see if they win. Earlier, eBay had a more hands off approach, and let the individuals and businesses sell items. However, eBay has started to change its approach, becoming more interactive with the community, and has become much more oriented towards buyers and has really cleared up scams and fake items over the years, creating a safe environment for buyers.
On the other hand, Amazon is much more focused in-depth on products and is set up much more like an organized store. Items that are sold by different merchants are listing on the same page, with a list of all the prices. In the course of fees, Amazon usually collects a fee once from sellers, which is a percentage of the item being sold. However, Amazon has, over the years, had minimal problems with scams and tends to have greater customer satisfaction. Amazon, also guarantees you receive the item since the price you see is the price you pay, and therefore will not need to wait until an auction ends. Amazon also eases the work for sellers by implementing programs, such being able to send their items to Amazon processing facilities to be sent to the customers. Amazon has an infrastructure that is ready for sellers to post, while on eBay, sellers must create their own posts, descriptions and many times pictures.
The corporate levels of both companies are also quite different in their vision. The eBay Corporation has been more oriented towards a technological conglomerate and expanding. Early in the 2000’s eBay starting to buy other sites and bought its flagship brand PayPal. PayPal continues to support endeavors today, and creates most of the revenue for the company. Later in the decade, eBay had bought Skype but later sold it for an astonishing amount, however these were only the core components of the company. The eBay corporation had bought out many technological and communication start-ups, diversifying its market.
Amazon, to the contrary, has been looking to build up its market by looking for more things to sell. Rather than buy out other similar companies or start-ups, Amazon has innovated the marketplace. Amazon had originally started out as an online bookstore, and diversified into an online Marketplace. Amazon has since sprawled into an international marketplace, for books, films, electronics, even high end furniture, and much more in its selection. Amazon in recent years has also invested in creating its own line of products, such as the Amazon kindle.
Can you organize or present the numbers below a bit nicer, in a boz or something? (in a box)
Current ratio of eBay = 23,283.00/12,639.00 = 1.842
Current ratio of Amazon = 24,625.00 /22,980.00= 1.072
Acid test ratio of eBay = 4,494.00 + 899.00 + 4,514.00
12,639.00 = 0.78
Acid test ratio of Amazon = 8,658.00 + 12,447.00
22,980.00 = 0.92
Debt to Owner’s equity eBay = 17,841.00/23,647.00 = 75%
Debt to Owner’s equity Amazon = 30,413.00/40,159.00 = 75.7%
Basic earnings per share eBay = 2,856.00/ 58, 88659793814433= 48.5
Basic earnings per share Amazon = 345.00 / 1,06428923988154 = 324.16
When looking at the financial conditions of both firms, it is noticed that both firms are in good financial standing but have peaked in their recent past. When looking at how fast the companies would be liquidate their assets, it is noticed through the current ratios that eBay has the advantage with a ratio of 1.824. However, when looking at the Acid test ratio of Amazon, it is noticed that Amazon has an advantage since it has a larger inventory and more investments in stocks and bonds. The debt of both companies is quite similar at seventy-five percent. However, Amazon does beat out eBay with the value of its shares.
The conclusion needs to include the financials. You need to be clear on what basis (other than financial) you are comparing them – you might say business model, profit focus etc. Make sure you use lots of headers and that you cite everything that is not common knowledge.
These two online giants are powerful competitors and have very similar concepts. The two companies have come along way since their dot com era start-ups. Starting out as small markets they having expanded into large cooperations. Amazon has become a beacon for online marketplaces, continually expanding their line of products and increasing it's market (Terapeak, 2011) . eBay had started out as a person to person auction website, and sprawled into an online conglomerate juggernaut (Bjornsson,2001). They have bought out other start-ups and diversified their business by entering other markets. This shows how different these companies really other, despite having similar concepts. Conclusively, these companies have pushed forward rising from tiny startups to huge corporations that many people now depend upon.
References
Web Book Giant Fighting Off Competitors. (1997, March 23). The New York Times. Retrieved June 19, 2014, from http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/24/business/web-book-giant-fighting-off-competitors.html Anderson, Charles & Johnson (2003). The impressive psychology paper.
Bjornsson, M. (2001, January 1). eBay's History. eBay's History. Retrieved June 19, 2014, from http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history.html
Terapeak How-To: Key Differences Between eBay and Amazon.com for eBay Sellers. (2013, June 24). Terapeak Blog. Retrieved June 20, 2014, from http://www.terapeak.com/blog/2013/06/24/terapeak-how-to-key-differences-between-ebay-and-amazon.com-for-ebay-seller/#.U6YNkvldWIg
The history of eBay. (2011, April 15). The Telegraph. Retrieved June 18, 2014, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/8451898/The-history-of-eBay.html
Pres, J. (2012, January 1). Amazon.com, Inc. History. <i>History of Amazon.com, Inc. – FundingUniverse</i>. Retrieved June 25, 2014, from http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/amazon-com-inc-history/
