1

Submitted By:

OJAS CHALKE – A009SAURABH KUMAR – A023SAILESH SAHADEVAN – A040ONKAR SAWANT – A058

Service Operations Management

1. How would you characterize the service eBay provides? What role do customers have in providing this service?

2

EBAYEBAY

3

• eBay began its business life as Auction Web and emphasized collectables.

• Originally the company was meant to be a marketplace for the sale of goods and services for individuals.

• The company established its brand as being an entity that connects people (with selling things as a by-product of that emphasis).

• eBay had characterize its services based on the Marketing Mix:

• Role of Customers:

a) Member not only provided product, services and execution but they were the source of new ideas and product categories as well.”

b) Ebay user also drove decision about how the site operated. Feedback and suggestion from buyer and seller during the day and made adjustment to the site.

c) Ebay hosted Voices full day focus group session for user across the country that enabled the company to obtain direct feedback from its user.

d) Ebay community in which people interacted with each other under a set of shared rules and expectations

4

EBAY

2. How effective has the company been in managing customer behavior? What, if anything, would you recommend the company do differently in this regard?

5

• EBay was quiet effective in handling the growing needs and demands of customer.

a) The company realized the importance of dynamic nature of eBay community. Managers were organized by product category and country for better understanding the needs of the user.

b) Company introduced fixed price trading concept. it also added 'Buy-it-Now” feature which enabled any buyer willing to pay seller pre-established price to immediately win an auction.

c) In 2001,ebay created eBay stores dedicated to individual merchants.d) EBay corporate participants were treated differently from other eBay seller, they

were given extra support but were also required to uphold strict selling and rating quotas

6

EBAY

Recommendations: Expand the auction market by introducing PayPal to more online auction markets.

eBay should acquire a greater online auction market share by educating online customers that PayPal is the online currency.

Perfect its proprietary fraud prevention system, which is essential to its success.

Put some restrictions on new sellers in expensive merchandise transaction or large volume sale until they have a good track record.

Expand to international market, decrease national boundary barriers in terms of payment (credit card/PayPal) and shipping. Cooperate with local equivalent companies or localize by itself.

Mediate between buyers and seller for any conflicts and solve it in a conservative way by respecting both sides’ privacy.

7

EBAY

3. How successful is eBay? Who do you consider its competition? What are the key threats to its success going forward?

8

 Ebay is  successful because it meets its customer's needs better than any competing service.

EBay was successful because it transform many fragmented primarily local markets into global ones at a relatively low cost to its users. It established a larger user base to attract new users.

EBay has allowed many people to become entrepreneurs with little upfront expense or overhead. The company's ability to bring a large number of buyers and sellers together is what has driven its growth.

Concerns about fraud have been mitigated through a user feedback system escrow services.

It has successfully introduced new target markets, such as car sales, which many thought would not be adaptable.

EBAY offers people to purchase items they want or need at prices often times lower than retail value through there online auctioning system.

9

EBAY

Competitors: Amazon.com, Inc. Google Inc. Overstock.com Yahoo.com

Threats:

Ability to attract, retain and engage buyers and sellers. Marinating volume of transactions and price and selection of goods. Customer service; and brand recognition. Website or mobile application ease-of-use and accessibility. Reliability of delivery and payment. Level of service fees and quality of search tools. Curbing Fraudulent activities.

10

EBAY

4. How do you recommend the company manage corporate involvement? What are the risks associated with your suggestion and how do you recommend they be mitigated?

11

Managing Corporate Involvement by:

Establishing a larger user base – Tie ups with different websites so that businesses could buy or sell new, used or refurbished business merchandise.

Creating a strong Brand Broadening the trading platform Maintaining a strong community affinity Continually enhancing site features and functionality

Risks associated:

Patents High cost of entry Brand loyalty Threat of new entrants Fake online reviews Counterfeit, stolen or damaged goods Delay and hassle with online purchases

12

EBAY

Risk Mitigation:

Continuous process improvements and innovative product offering

Safe and secure online platform

Monitoring of online reviews

Verifying the product costing

Increasing the scalability of the servers & preparing alternate back up sites

13

EBAY

5. If you have experienced eBay auctions first-hand, recall your motivation for participating and evaluation of the experience. If you have never participated in an eBay auction, search through the listings at www.ebay.com. How do you, as a new user, feel about the site content and navigation?

14

EBay is one of the best sites that we have used to purchase a few required things, the basic reasons for participating and the evaluation of the experience is based on the following:

Trust : Ebay offers the 100% satisfaction or replacement/refund guarantee. This site also has the pay pal program which entitles you to the protection program also.

Value : Ebay is the one of the best sites that offer you a value for your money through the wide range of products available on their website at different prices to select from

Selection :- there are a variety of things that one can select from this site. Electronics, Apparel, Home decors and other things required at home, Jewellery, Toys and Games for children and whole wide range of things that are used on a day to day basis.

Convenience : Being an online e commerce site it gives the convenience to the buyer to buy things sitting at home and the seller to sell things from home, no matter if they are in different parts of the country.

15

EBAY

6. Increasingly, businesses are indicating a desire to create a community around their products and services. What is the motivation for building a community? How is it built? When is it desirable? What are its risks?

16

Caring about your customers and making sure they know the lengths you go for to keep them happy is crucial to the success of a business. eBay makes their community a main priority at all times. eBay is continually coming up with new ways to reach out to their customers. They have come up with the Feedback Forum that is used for customers to provide comments about their trading partners.

Since a website cannot be successful if people cannot figure out how to use it, eBay strives to provide high quality customer service, with the help of many different technologies to provide online support, such as chat rooms, discussion boards, and frequently asked questions (FAQs).

There are some categories available in the help section that would be useful for the newest members, including “Becoming an eBay member,” “Finding an Item” and “Getting Started on eBay,” as well as some moderately more advanced categories of questions for more experienced users, such as “Selling” and “eBay Stores

If the user either doesn’t want to use the FAQs or cannot find the answer they need, there is an option for the user to click on a “Contact Us” link on every help page. This is where a person can send an email to eBay’s customer service representatives, who are located in customer support centers in Burnaby, British Columbia; Salt Lake City, UT; Omaha, NE; and Berlin, Germany.

eBay uses an automatic email response technology to immediately send a message to the email sender that the staff has received their email question. Another email is sent out with the actual answer within 24 to 48 hours in most cases, often even faster.

17

EBAY