George Mason University
INFS-640 (E-commerce)
Spring-2003
An Analysis of eBay
eBay, by far, is the most popular online auction used today. It is also the
most heavily populated auction site. Since the early beginning, EBay has created
its own unique community and marketplace like no other. eBay has transformed the way that people buy, sell and trade goods. From rare
antiques to cell phone covers, EBay creates a new type of lifestyle. eBay becomes a part of our members' lifestyles. Many members have created second
businesses by selling items on eBay. Some have moved their brick and mortar
business to eBay. Others have quit their day job altogether! For millions of
people, eBay is the place to share a passion for items that are special or just
to shop for practically anything on earth. 3.1 Overall Population 3.2 Active Users 3.2.1 International Population
3.0 Population
The eBay community is made up of a variety of people: individual buyers and
sellers, small businesses and even Fortune 100 companies. Large and small, these
members come together on eBay to do more than just buy or sell-they have fun,
shop around, get to know one another and pitch in to help.
This marketplace has attracted over 62 million registered users and has over
195 million listings worldwide. This combination has yielding sales of goods
that surpass $4.6 billion in quarter 4 of 2002. That means that annualized sales
for the year of 2002 has exceeded $18.4 billion. If this were broken down, that’s
$50 million per day or $579 per second.
The 27.7 million active users have transacted over $513 million in the
fourth quarter of 2002. This proves that the eBay has a very strong
number of members that are constantly involved in auctions. This means
that they are “repeat” customers, which is a very important
aspect in business.
Among these users who are deemed active, the gross merchandise sales
per user have been steadily increasing per quarter. The average sales
per active user is just over $510 in quarter 4, 2002, compared to just
$446 in quarter 1, 2001.
Since eBay does officially keep the population of individual countries or regions,
it is difficult to determine this statistic. eBay primarily focuses in on the
overall population. eBay, however, does keep information on International marketplaces
which will be discusses later.
