SWOT Analysis Of Ebay E-commerce Essay Using ICT.

Question:

Discuss about the SWOT Analysis Of Current ICT Service In Ebay Marketplace And Its Long Term Action Plan.

The aim of this assignment is to perform the SWOT Analysis of a current ICT (Information and Communication Technology) service in world’s largest E-commerce marketplace, that is,  Ebay e-commerce organization and to identify the internal (Strength, Weakness) and external (Opportunities, Threats) positives and negatives of an Ebay organization. This assignment is to understand the issues and problems of an Ebay E-commerce organization and to set goals to develop an action plan. This assignment will make us understand what actions an Ebay  e-commerce organization can take on the current scenario, how new opportunities can help develop the new client service delivery relationships with Information and Communication Technology  retailers and products and what would be an action plan for an Ebay e-commerce to stand out in a crowd for a long term(CSO, 2016).

Information and Communication Technology plays a vital role in the growth of Ebay E-commerce.  ICT manages all the transactions and messages online(UNCTAD, 2003).  This helps the Ebay E-commerce to manage their online users who buy the products by surfing the internet in their free time rather that going out to the market. This typically includes browsing products online, adding the products to the cart and checking out by paying though the online payment gateways (Credit Cart, Debit card, net-banking,  third party API’s like PayPal)  integrated in the Ebay E-commerce website(Gupta, 2014). The role of ICT is important in any e-commerce as it manages all orders, payment transactions, invoices,  or description of products and handle all automated exchange of data between ICT and Ebay E-commerce. The ICT provides various other services like  Cloud computing, ISDN, mobile internet, broadband connections, dial up access, etc. ICT is considered significantly important for Ebay E-commerce and help them understand their business and competition in the international market. The broadband service by Internet and communication technology helps most in boosting  up the revenue of the  Ebay E-commerce service in a wider range(Mokashi, 2012).

Following are the strengths of Ebay e-commerce marketplace :

• Distinguishable brand recognition:Ebay E-commerce is a well known online brand due to its auction related services.

• Global scope: Ebay E-commerce is a focal or main point of interest for the sellers and buyers who are actively using the main feature (auction) of this broad marketplace.

• Online Auctions:Clients can buy the products online at a cheaper price for a particular interval of time, during the auction period. Sellers in the Ebay marketplace list the products which are on sale for a limited period of time by providing them the opportunity to bid in that auction at a competitive price.
• Localization: Ebay marketplace provides the multi-lingual functionality which helps the users to get the product listing in their own local language. Currently, Ebay is operating in approx 35 countries and it’s a big advantage for Ebay E-commerce as no other marketplace in Ebay’s competitive is expanded to such extent.
• Niche products:Ebay Marketplace includes almost all products that interest the customers at a particular location or time.
• High Traffic and ranking on Google: Approx 54% of online users from the United States visits the Ebay marketplace and its placed at global rank of 57 and 7 in the US.
• Tie ups with different large organizations: Ebay E-commerce tie-ups with various known brands like Square Trade, Auctionwatch, AOL, IBM, Yahoo, PayPal and Skype is their biggest strength which helps them to increase their market base.
• Charity donations: Another feature of Ebay marketplace which allows the buyers or sellers to donate a percentage of the amount to the charity online(Yadav & Sharma, 2014).

• Technology Crash: Peoplesometimes experience the technology crash while making the payments.
• Low product quality: As Ebay has a wide range of sellers, there is no guarantee to get a high quality product.
• Fraudulent activities by sellers: There are some fraudulent activities done by the sellers like selling the defected items or wrong products with color/size variants.
• Customer satisfaction: As Ebay is a large marketplace, it’s difficult for them to maintain the customer satisfaction for each product/services sold through their website.
• No personal services: There are no personal services provided by the website yet like grooming, hair styling etc.
• Increase in fees for sellers: Ebay Marketplace has increased the fees for the sellers account.

• Increase in mobile shoppers: Due to the emergence of mobile e-commerce, there is an opportunity to increase the sales through mobile sites or apps.
• Acquisition with other brands: Ebay Marketplace had already a good reputation in acquiring the brands. They can expand this to other brands also.
• Expansion in other countries: They have an expansion in around 35 countries and can expand more in other countries(Awais & Samin, 2012).
• Advertising: Ebay Marketplace can increase their sales by investing in advertising their new and upcoming features and brands.
• Begin to be a retailer:. Ebay can become a retailer in itself to see the activities of other online marketplace websites and to earn a profit from their competitors.

• Online trading competition: Ebay Marketplace can have a threat from other marketplace or trading business.
• Fraud or illegal action: Due to its expansion in approx 35 countries, the chances of fraud is high.
• Competition with other retailers: They can have a competition in place with other retailers in the market.
• Change in law: In the future, they can lose their customer base or revenue if there is any change in law in terms of exchange rates.
• Privacy concern: Ebay has a threat of any kind of theft or fraud during transactions.
• Cost control: Ebay marketplace has to control the cost of the products and remain competitive with other marketplace.

This report is to study the competitors of the larger marketplace website. That is, Ebay. Ebay, has few direct and indirect competitors in the global market which work on the similar verticals like competitors providing services like auction, marketplace service, classified services, etc. (Eghoff & Mabey, 2014)

SWOT Analysis

Few factors on which we can evaluate the competition on Ebay with its competitors includes:

• Brand recognition.
• Quality of product and security
• Professional management
• Strong economic trends
• Brand name in the global market
• Strong financial reputation
• Strong and trusted brand name
• Client engagement
• Rates of goods and services, etc.

To describe both the e-commerce and m-commerce competition of the Ebay with other marketplace, the other factors which can be considered are:

• Ebay’s online visibility and its responsive feature on all the devices.
• Reliability of the system.
• Cost of services.
• Security of the payment and delivery to the customers, etc.

Ebay has a believe that they have made the best use of the above said factors, but there are chances when its competitors will can make the best or most effective use of these to  achieve or produce better than Ebay(Chaffey, 2013).

The goal of Ebay marketplace is to increase the revenue or turnover by using the services of Information Technology and Communication (ITC). The main objectives of the Ebay marketplace are defined using the services of the ITC factors mentioned below :

• Making the online customers to get registered on the Ebay marketplace using their email or social media accounts. This will help the Ebay marketplace to increase their client base.
• The registered users will help the Ebay marketplace in increasing the auction bids, buyers and sellers(Kent, 2008).
• The increase in the number of users/auctioneers/buyers/sellers will be directly proportional to the revenue in the future.

This is to study the strength of current Ebay marketplace and using them to create chances of developing a relationship with Information Communication and Technology. ICT can help Ebay with creating a strong business alliance and helping them with:

• Providing the features of performing the LIVE audits and bids in the online marketplace.
• Providing the sellers to post jobs or opportunities online so that the users can apply for those posts as per the competitive value.
• Ebay has launched a new feature called Safeharbour. ICT can help eBay to perform all the security holes and validating all the customers using the online portal.
• Creating new business alliances with other offline future competitive market.
• Making Ebay communicate with business in the global market, which can help them to launch or bring traffic to their website in different countries.
• Providing them the softwares or technologies that can put forward their brand place at the top in the international market(Gallagar, 2009).

Few days back, Ebay has revealed their long term plan which will help the marketplace to increase their revenue by approximately 41% over the next few years. They have also stated in their revealing note that this has been analyzed and evaluated as per the current profit coming from the third party payment gateway, PayPal(Zacks Equity Research, 2013). The CEO of the company has some plans to continue their business alliance with PayPal, taking into consideration PayPal’s role in the overall growth of the Ebay marketplace in the global market. The primary service provided by the Ebay marketplace, that is, auction has also been considered as the vital feature in increasing the turnover, thereby providing an opportunity to bring the best opportunities in the future. Both PayPal and Auction feature of Ebay marketplace are nothing without the core service provided by the ICT, which plays a crucial role in creating the overall growth plan of Ebay e-commerce marketplace.

Conclusion:

In this report, we have evaluated the role of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Ebay  organization and have performed the SWOT Analysis based on the current issues, goals, objectives and action plans of the current situation of the Ebay marketplace.

Depending upon the current situation of the Ebay marketplace, we have analyzed the competitors of Ebay, and Ebay’s goals and objectives. We have also evaluated the new opportunities that can help build a business alliance with the ICT using the present situation or strengths of the Ebay e-commerce. We have also included the action plan that can help the Ebay to grow well in long -term.

References

Awais, M., & Samin, T. (2012, March). Advanced SWOT Analysis of E-Commerce. IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, 9(2), 569-573. Retrieved from https://www.ijcsi.org/papers/IJCSI-9-2-2-569-574.pdf

Chaffey, D. (2013, June). eBay case study. Retrieved from https://www.smartinsights.com/ecommerce/ecommerce-strategy/ebay-case-study-2/

CSO. (2016). Standard Report on Methods and Quality for e-Commerce and ICT Usage. Retrieved from https://cso.ie/en/media/csoie/methods/e-commerceandictsurvey/EcommQualRpt2016.pdf

Eghoff, P., & Mabey, L. (2014). EBay Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.stjohns.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Tobin/smif-ug-ebay.pdf

Gallagar, D. (2009). EBay sets long-term plan to revive business . Retrieved from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ebay-outlines-long-term-plan-relies

Gupta, A. (2014). E-commerce : Role of E-commerce innn today's business. International Journal of Computing and Corporate Research, 4(1). Retrieved from https://www.ijccr.com/January2014/10.pdf

Kent, M. (2008). eBay’s Strategic Process. Retrieved from https://mis.kent.edu/Users/weinroth/public/July%208%20EBayProgressReport.htm

Mokashi, A. (2012). Role of ICT in E-commerce business in developing countries. International journal of advanced studies, 2(3), 1-9. Retrieved from https://puneresearch.com/media/data/issues/5990763f4e049.pdf

UNCTAD. (2003). ICT and e-commerce - an opportunity for developing countries. Retrieved from https://unctad.org/en/docs/issmisc20036_en.pdf

Yadav, K., & Sharma, D. (2014). SWOT Analysis of E-Commerce. Advance in Electronic and Electric Engineering., 4(6), 663-668. Retrieved from https://www.ripublication.com/aeee_spl/aeeev4n6spl_19.pdf

Zacks Equity Research. (2013). eBay Outlines Long-Term Growth Plan. Retrieved from https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/96271/ebay-outlines-longterm-growth-plan