BiblioCrunch.com Books

How eBay special wedding dresses lost the China market
special wedding dresses short wedding dresses Solar Charge Controller terminal block swingman jerseys shopping bags chain saw led street light microscope stereo carbon steel pipes swing check valve led bubble light proximity switch vente chaussures seamless pipe Top cartridge mechanical seal irobot roomba ball valve Suppliers ahappydeal
How eBay lost the China market Published: 09 Aug 2009 20:02:01 PSTBy Sherman So and J. Christopher WestlandEditor’s note: This article has been adapted from Red Wired: China’s Internet Revolution co-authored by Sherman So and J. Christopher Westland. The to-be-published book is aimed at helping readers gain a firsthand understanding of how the Chinese combined successful components from their Western counterparts with innovation, to accommodate the unique characteristics of the Chinese market.Many believe Taobao beat global online auction king eBay in China by being free, but not EachNet founder Bo Shao who sold the company to eBay in July 2003. A key catalyst was “migration”, the decision to terminate EachNet’s homegrown technology platform and move all EachNet users to the eBay US platform, said Shao.On the day of the migration, traffic to eBay China dropped by half. Despite the serious customer losses, Meg Whitman, then CEO of eBay, only learned about it a month after it occurred, on a visit to Shanghai.Whitman was shocked and very upset. Apparently, even the head of eBay International at the time, who was one of the most ardent proponents of migration, did not tell Whitman about it. By 2003, eBay’s global expansion plan had reached China. It completed its acquisition of the country’s dominant auction player, EachNet, for $180 million in July 2003. EachNet at the time had more than 2 million users and about 85 percent of the market.EachNet’s market dominance was so strong that Shao started charging listing and transaction fees in 2001, despite the existence of free competing sites. He believed that as long as the site had the most buyers and made money for sellers, the sellers would be willing to pay. According to Shao, fees did not affect user loyalty; in fact, EachNet’s dominance increased after it started charging.After the acquisition, Shao retired from daily operations of eBay China and moved to the US in late 2003 with his family. eBay sent in a number of expatriates from Germany, the US, Korea, and Taiwan to run the China division and hired a number of senior executives from other multinational corporations in China.The company thought everything would be fine. After all, EachNet, now eBay China had an overwhelmingly dominant position and it planned to spend an extra $100 million to improve its technology platform and promote eBay’s brand in China. Any new competitors would be easy to crush.However, nothing went according to plan. A new rival came out of nowhere and eBay retreated from China four years later.Rise of TaobaoAfter Alibaba started making profits on its main B2B site, its founder Jack Ma took aim at the potentially much bigger C2C (consumer-to-consumer) market. Ma gathered a small team working in secret. By May 2003, the website Taobao, which means “looking for treasure” in Chinese, was launched.While eBay was busy consolidating EachNet into its global operation, Alibaba was plugging Taobao as a new online shopping destination. And unlike its American-owned competitor, Taobao was free!But levying listing fees and transaction fees was not the only reason eBay lost its dominance to Taobao, said EachNet co-founder Shao, who, after selling the company to eBay in July 2003, stayed on as a consultant for over a year.“At first, even with Taobao making a lot of noise, our users and traffic did not change much,” said Shao.Despite having to pay fees, the larger user base of eBay China was more than enough to keep sellers coming. Similarly, most buyers stayed on, as there were more sellers and products offered.In fact, latecomers seldom posed a serious threat to the dominant online auction player. They might capture some ma门禁 即日 融資 深圳搬家 联轴器 FX 初心者 現金化 灭火器 キャバクラ バイト