Assignment 2

Choose an e-commerce company and assess it in terms of the eight unique features of e-
commerce technology described in Table 1.2 (refer to the e-book). Which of the features does
the company implement well, and which features poorly, in your opinion? Prepare a short
memo to the president of the company you have chosen detailing your findings and any
suggestions for improvement you may have.

Ans: The e-commerce company that I have chosen for my assignment is eBay. The reason behind
choosing it is because it was one of the first companies to create internet business to match buyers and
sellers of goods and services and is the most successful website that highlight online auction.

EBay is an online shopping platform that helps people to sell their wide variety of goods and services
worldwide as on auction and shop through it too. On EBay buyers and sellers gets a platform to come
together and trade almost anything enabling sellers to display all their merchandise in one place. It
was launched by American entrepreneur Pierre Omidyar in 1995. Even though eBay was known to be
an auction site, but over the years it has evolved into a successful e-commerce site that offers a wide
array of products from thousands, perhaps millions, of businesses and people. When eBay started the
only way to sell an item was by auction but now auction is dead and diminishing due to the sense of
urgency of buyers, buyers don’t want to wait for days to buy goods. EBay has utilized innovative
ways to increase the sale of products without requiring to carrying any inventory, and has its share of
profit margin from every transaction that it does. EBay’s success is attributed to its unique business
plan: allowing individuals or businesses to list new or used items for auction for a very low fee. EBay
has over 168 million active buyers and it’s growing daily. It operates in about 32 countries, as of
2019. It provides B2C, B2B, and C2C transactions as an E-Commerce.

The eight unique features of eBay are:

1. Ubiquity: Ubiquity basically means to be available everywhere whether you are in a bus traveling or
in your home watching TV; if you have access to internet you are able to surf through the website
anytime. EBay is ubiquitous too, it is the first important unique feature because this features has
removed geographic location and has extended beyond traditional boundaries where customers and
sellers connect from anywhere they are. The website of eBay can be visited by everyone from all
around the world at any time. It provides visitors the ability to browse through available products
listed for sale or auction and for that you just need to have access to Internet. For example, if I am on
traveling, anywhere I can search whatever product I’m looking for on eBay because it has so many
varieties of good (almost everything) with detail about the particular product and I can order what I
want/ need and also can have it delivered to any location. This feature of eBay drastically reduces
shopping costs to include time spend looking for an item, make it convenience and save time to go to
 a particular store to buy a goods. Also eBay has its own application for mobile devices to make it
easier to use. Everything can be done through online such as purchase, paying, and tracking.

2. Global reach: Ecommerce has blossomed with the help of internet being available everywhere.
Global reach basically means the number of user or customers an e-commerce business can obtain.
EBay is an ecommerce which has global reach too. EBay’s technology tries to reach consumers
outside and across of its host country/national boundaries. Since EBay has been serving as auction
and selling goods since many years, it has great global reach not only in USA but also around the
world across the national boundaries. Everyone around the world can make use of eBay. People
across the world will easily get access to eBay just by signing up an account and then they can make
use of the services that eBay presents. It operates in about 32 countries and has over 183 million
active buyers which are increasing day by day.

3. Universal standards: Talking about the universal standard, in case of eBay the standards may vary
from one country to another. The standard shared by all nations around the world may not be same.
EBay has universal standard but when you look at every single point, you can decide that eBay has
different prices, different products in each country. Besides the prices you also have the shipping
costs, which are different for some countries. So here we can decide that eBay has universal
standards, but there are still some standards that are different from one country towards another. Since
eBay is one of the top ecommerce companies they keep their technological standards up to date. It
doesn’t serve every country with the same level of websites. Internet stands are not same, whether a
customer is ordering from USA or form any other country. EBay has different websites for different
countries for example for United States- www.ebay.com, China- www.ebay.cn, Thailand-
sellercenter.ebay.co.th, Netherlands- www.ebay.nl

4. Information richness: Richness of information is an important feature of an ecommerce because the

more richness, the more products you can sell. E-Commerce has encouraged the trend of information
Richness. Traditional commerce has way more richness than ecommerce because they interact face to
face and customers can see the product more clearly, but when it’s on online, you cannot touch nor
feel the product. Ecommerce should provide not only text messages but also image, animation, audio
and video for better communication of product. When we look at eBay we can directly decide that
there is information richness. They don’t only give us some typed information but they also give
pictures of every product. But EBay only allows people to text messages within eBay’s platform and
does not give an option for sharing videos or audios.

5. Interactivity: The next feature is interactivity which means the technology that allows two way
communications between seller and buyer and between consumers. On eBay you can’t directly
 communicate with the vendor on the website. But when you look further, you can access the contact
data of the vendor. And whit that information you can contact the vendor. Interactivity in ecommerce
helps in feedbacks, customer support, reviews etc. You can interact if you are having issue with the
product, price and about shipping. It somehow provides interactivity with the customers, after items
are shipped most sellers provide a tracking number and with that number buyers can their order. So
there are some form of communication between the consumers, seller and buyers.

6. Information density: Internet vastly increases the information density so ecommerce must provide
total amount of information through the help of internet. EBay has listed variety of products along
with its price and other needed information on its website. EBay provides accurate information about
the product to the customers. Looking at the information that is given, we can decide that the
description of the product is much extended. Beside the description you can directly find a price and
the day when the bidding will be over. It also includes the transparency of price and cost which also
help to the customers. It also speeds up the process of accessing the information which contributes to
increased service times of the customer. EBay is providing dense information about the product such
as buyer’s satisfaction, how many products have been sold, shipping detail, quantity of the product,
condition of the product through their website and also sharing the experience of the customers
through feedback who have already availed the facility. So it not only measures the total amount of
data but also quality and how much of data is available to the consumers.

7. Personalization/customization: Some websites will personalize the content according to your

interest/ preference while some websites tracks your interest and give related information. When it
comes to customization, eBay provides that kind of feature for sellers to put into their stores. There is
a growing trend now of customization in many different businesses. Personalization / customization
aren’t a feature that is used by eBay. They don’t ask you for preferences, for products that you like.
You can give the state of the product, a price range, the color, etc. But you need to do that every time
you want to buy a product.

8. Social technology: Social technology has changed E-Commerce in many ways. It has allowed people
all over the world to start networking and share their interests, which in turn have allowed companies
to more selectively target their customer bases. Social technologies help companies to stay connected
with its customer. EBay is on Facebook and twitter from where they can share information regarding
the changes and updates to their customers. By the help of social technology information are easily
shared among millions of people just in some couple of second. EBay gives a feature for both sellers
and buyers to share products through social networks. But you won’t find a button on the website
where you can share a product on a social media site. EBay relies on its users to self-regulate the
trading community through a feedback system that allows buyers to rate sellers on transactions.
The feature that the eBay implements well is Information density. Information is power. Information
density because eBay’s website has detailed information about any particular product. Large variety
of items can be found for sale on eBay and eBay has managed to keep detailed information about each
and every product that is on auction and sale. The information include whether the product is in good
condition or not, how many quantity of product are left, how many has been sold, information on
customers review and satisfaction on that particular product, price of the product etc. No matter the
size of our product or services, eBay has various categories channels to sell items. You can get almost
anything item you need or want at very low deal better than you can on other online or traditional
shop too. Since eBay has no physical building eBay store, it has tried its best communicate and
convince the goods to its customer.

However the more poorly feature is global reach. It operates in about 32 countries which are
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Netherlands, and Spain etc. EBay
is more developed and extended in North America areas, for example, international customers may
not have more benefits as Americans have. Since eBay differs in universal standard, people across the
globe cannot get equal services. These might include fast two-day shipping or delivery, or costs for
shipping might be high. EBay is accessible all around the world, and people can order many things
from eBay, on the other hand, for instance, some products, especially that are from the United States
areas might not be available for shipment to Central Asia countries. Because of that many people from
Central Asia might not know about eBay. An important area for improvement is cross-border trade,
which includes shipping, customs and language translation. Even though eBay operates in many
country, it is doesn’t operate in Nepal. EBay doesn’t decide where seller will ship; it just gives a
platform for sellers and buyers to connect, so shipping is totally up to individual seller.