EBAY - why so successful

The major purpose of eBay is to allow people to sell products they own for a price they like and allow other people to bid on the product over a certain period of time, it also allows some users to set up shops to sell specific product such as clothing (like the socks I have)

The target audience of eBay is for older and more matured people as products are of interests to collectors of antiques or are trying to find cheap presents for the friends or family as some prices for products such as games and DVDs are a lot cheaper on eBay compared to other online retailers.

The action process is quite simple really the person selling the item chooses a price they are willing to sell the product at, add P&P (post and packing) if they want as they can gain money lost in this process and allow people to bid. To bid is just as easy as the person willing to buy the item must be willing to pay the price of the object plus post and packing without being out bid this is helpful is the person does not wish to own the product as they don’t need to bid more.

It fulfils these purposes very well as there are lots of online stores which allow people to buy products at lower prices then they could find anywhere else on the internet, also this allows many people trying to find rare products to buy them as they may be a collector of a fan.

The benefits of using eBay is that the prices on some objects are very low in price allowing people to save money, collectors are able to find products they are looking for, it lets people who want to sell the products they don’t want for a price they like which allows them to gain money and people are able to get products from different countries by sellers in different countries.
The limitations of using eBay is that is someone gets in to your account they are able to buy anything (which has been shown on the news with children accessing eBay accounts and buying toys), some people sell ridicules items which make find some product frustrating, some people lie by selling an item when they actually aren’t leading to people losing money and no refunds as the site does not take responsibility and some people sell items that can be found at high street and supermarkets for very high prices which makes find low prices hard (this has been seen with the releases of some games consoles with someone selling a Nintendo Wii console for £1000)

eBay is so successful as a shopping model as it allows normal people to sell items they do not want any more for some money they may need and also allows the to set up shops without the need for a building or high street shop and as the internet is become more accessible to lots of people more people will buy from the website allowing people to become more economically sufficient.