girls alike: an example of an E-commerce success and its causes

eBay, an online auction Web site founded in San Jose, California, on September 3, 1995, by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb, part of a larger personal site that included, among other things, Omidyar's own tongue-in-cheek tribute to the Ebola virus.

In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar's consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.com (the domain has recently been put up for sale) but found it has already been taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.

eBay allows people to often times connect with some very fond and special early childhood memories. It could be anything from collecting baseball cards to toy soldiers to Barbie dolls to doll houses, and so forth. It allows people to make that connection and relive a lot of those very vivid and very fond memories that they have from an earlier period of time.

Another factor to consider to its success is that people really enjoy the experience of the shopping bazaar. They enjoy the hunt. They enjoy looking around for merchandise. The other component is that eBay believe many people enjoy the competition of the bidding process. Everybody likes to get a bargain, and everybody, in some way, shape, or form, likes to haggle a little bit over the price. eBay has setup a user-friendly platform that allows users to do that. As eBay has grown, it has become a very practical place to buy and sell collectibles or commodities.

Moreover, eBay have many strategic partnerships, chief among them is America Online. eBay have created a series of co-branded sites through the AOL properties, and they have a number of arrangements with smaller sites that go back several years as an exchange to encourage people to come into the eBay site.

eBay went public on September 21, 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. Subsequently, the company purchased PayPal on October 14, 2002. The domain ebay.com attracted at least 902 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study. This was thrice the numbers of walmart.com.