eBay US and eBay Asia market comparison

E-Bay U.S., E-Bay Asia

For eBay, an important strength is the partnership it has managed to set in place, especially with fellow competitor Yahoo. Teaming up with Yahoo meant that the company would be able to benefit from Yahoo's longer presence and better experience in Asia and from those markets there. Another important strength for the company is its sheer size and its capacity to employee a significant amount of resources, both human and financial, in order to reach its goals. Indeed, in 2004, eBay had revenues of $3.27 billion, which meant that it could employ around $100 million for advertising only in China. Finally, an important strength is the PayPal payment system, which makes payments more secure and easier to make.

As for weaknesses, just is the case with eBay Asia, the company's business is not thoroughly diversified in order to be able to confront itself with potential decreasing numbers of clients. If we take Google, for example, besides the simple search service, it has also developed a large number of different services that make it more attractive for the public. As for eBay, it has not managed to surpass its condition as a simple electronic marketplace where businesses and customers meet with each other to conduct transactions.

In terms of opportunities, these will come from consolidating the profitable European market, where the company is strongly positioned, while at the same time attempting to develop the Asian market, with its high potential.

Finally, the threats for eBay seem to come both from companies offering services online, as for companies that provided similar marketplace services.

For eBay Asia, an important strength has been the opening, in 2007, of new local eBay sites, in the local languages, which creates a strong portfolio of such sites. The last additions were the launch of eBay in Vietnam, as well as a B2B eBay in China. Additionally, the company benefits from the mother company's resources in its expansion.

An important weakness relates to the fact that the decision makers are not always fully connected to the Asian market and, thus, are not always taking into consideration the cultural differences between Asian and Western civilization.

In terms of opportunities, the Asian market offers in itself a great potential of expansion for any company. With growing individual revenues and boosting economies, markets such as Singapore, Korea and, presently, China, are virtually limitless in the possibility that can be offered to the company. As far back as 2002, eBay shifted its operations from Japan to areas such as Taiwan and Singapore (it closed its Japanese operations in March 2002), thus wanting to benefit from the economic expansion and potential in these countries.