Digital Disruption and eBay's Transformation

Ebay is an American multinational e-commerce corporation. It promotes sales through its website. The eBay website involves an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell extensive variety of merchandise. Basically, this is a digital disruption event, which not only changes the traditional shopping trends, but also the online selling business of eBay itself. In this report, the work centred analysis (WCA) have been performed on the retail business of eBay prior and post implementation of the digital disruption events, challenges faced by the company, recommendations based on the analysis and implementation plan of the way to overcome the challenge.

Assumptions

For the newer sellers shipping on eBay can seems like a bit frighten. Well it is assumed that if I sell a lot, I’ll be spending all my time at the post office but actually it is just opposite. Then some people find out that it is hard to find out shipping costs. Well it is hard, if you are not prepared. People often complain about the lack of time but actually the lack of direction is the real problem.

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Introduction

Digital disruption is the change that comes when new technologies and business models affects the value proposition of existing goods and services. It characterizes more disruptive changes in business history (Christensen, 1997). Digital disruption deals with the changes that occurs after the entry of new technologies in companies. Digital disruption is important for organizations because it is important for the competitive advantage. By understanding the digital disruption companies can keep existing customers happy as well as create opportunities for new customers. When digital disruption also signals that consumer needs are moving. This report will monologue the impacts of digital disruption introduced by eBay on the company itself and its Work Centred Analysis (WCA) prior and post to the implementation of the digital disruption events.

Introduction to the case study eBay was s first global auction platform. Millions of appliances, furnishing items, equipment, vehicles and other necessary items are listed, bought, or sold daily on eBay. Basically, anything can be auctioned on the site. Although the company has faced a lot of challenges in expanding to new markets, which indicates its eventual decrease domestically. Ultimately eBay can survive as a used good sellers because it threats from better positioned competitors. At the end of 2017 eBay has 168 million active buyers, an increase from 90 million active in 2010. Near about two-third of transactions are now international. eBay allows sellers to list items for sale on an auction and also fixed-price method giving buyers the opportunity to offer and purchase items of interest. Digitization is not anymore just an emerging trend, and it is changing the economics of globalization in several ways (Thibaut Wautelet). It is concerned with business-model innovation that enables entrants to entre markets with easy to use, but low-performing products (Christensen 2006; Christensen et al. 2015).

Work Centred Analysis (WCA) prior to the disruption event

In the digital innovation discourse, multiple related terms with various nuances, are sometimes used interchangeably (Lenger et al. 2017; Nambisan 2018). Work Centred Analysis (WCA) involves six main segments and these segments are customers, products, business process, participants, information and technology. Customers are the inward and outward buyers of the business activity. Products are the merchandise and facilities produced by the business. The business process mentions the steps involved in business. Participants are those who elaborate the business. Information refers the understanding or awareness that the business creates for the customers. At last technology is used by the business to manage the needed activities.

Problems identified

Since eBay is the one of the best marketplace for new business. However, there are some issues that many sellers can face and these issues can stop their success on the platform. Some people are selling same kind of products while the competition may work in favour of the buyer. Because some sellers are selling duplicate quality stuff which gets sold quickly while the other seller have to wait for the wise buyer to see the difference between the quality of the products. Then there are some negative or bad reviews which can hurt sellers a lot. Also when buyer does not like the quality of product then he or she has all rights to cancel the purchase and ask for refund. Then in that case seller suffer a double loss. eBay has seen more frauds done by the buyers than the sellers. These frauds include fake payments from fake PayPal account, fake reviews, negative feedback etc.

Work Centred Analysis (WCA) post implementation of the disruption event

Digital innovation has been defined narrowly, focusing on the design process (Yoo et al. 2010). eBay provides infrastructure to settle online commerce in a variety of formats. The innovation labs in eBay will give consumers the chance to explore the emerging technologies. Emerging technologies basically opens a new word of inspiration and experience. eBay is working with emerging digital trends. Due to addition of new technologies numerous customers have been satisfied. The first transformation is from Auction to “Fixed-Price” and “Buy-It-Now”. Auction worked very well in the initial stages but this format lost its propulsion easily. The second transformation is from “listing-based” to “Product-based” Structured data. Then eBay has transformed the shopping experience to be more product-based. eBay have better services for buyers. As a process, digital innovation is therefore inherently combinatorial and societal digital transformation continuously expands the available design space for digital innovation (Lyytinen and Rose 2003).

Recommendations

These following are some recommendations that helps to handle the issues faced by the company:

1. When any seller sell an item on eBay but sometimes a customer has second thoughts and does not pay for the item then in that case the seller will able to refunded by eBay for the fee.
2. Offer a fair return policy, it becomes easy when buyers feels confident while purchasing items on the site. So it is necessary to describe that the buyer will get refund.
3. One of the largest barrier for new sellers is packaging. Packaging is a skill that anyone can learn with practice and patience. So learn to package and shipping items properly is also required.
4. One of the most powerful technique is working in bulk. The sellers who can use the bulk listing technique will gain a significant benefit by saving large amount of time.
5. Buyers on eBay are looking for separate things, some wants lowest price items and the others wants the new product But at the end of day, every clients wants to be sure they are making a purchase from a trustworthy merchant who will always supply a good quality product.

Implementation plan for the recommendations:

1. Get more eyes on your listings, use advanced listings to create effective ad placement in well known locations across eBay and pay nothing unless the ad leads to a sale.
2. Make customized discounts and coupons to motivate buyers to spend more in your store. Use promotions manager to improve your items.
3. Go worldwide, to get buyers around the world. The global shipping program is a better way to expand your sales and market. Selling items globally is as easy as selling across the towns.
4. Also an easy way to encourage eBay buyers to return to your store is to include a package insert such as business card. This plan can easily help to promote the eBay store.

Conclusion

EBay is well aware that in order to the company to maintain its competitive benefit and make it sustainable in the long term run, the company must take benefit of the changes at the corporate, organization and business level. eBay accept the five building blocks which are applied randomly throughout eBay’s history. These five building blocks are improvisation, co-adaption, regeneration, experimentation and time pacing. The company also accepts the principles of competing on the edge about strategy, organization and leadership.

References

1. Christensen CM (1997) The innovation dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail. Harvard Business School Press, Boston Christensen CM (2006) The ongoing process of building a theory of disruption. J Prod InnovManag 23(1):39–55.
2. Christensen CM, Raynor M, McDonald R (2015) What Is disruptive innovation? In: Harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation Accessed 26 June 2018 eBay continues shift to Amazon-esque business, https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/19/ebay-continues-shift-to-amazon-esque-business/.
3. Legner C, Eymann T, Hess T et al (2017) Digitalization: opportunity and challenge for the business and information systems engineering community. Bus Inf Syst Eng 59(4):301–308.
4. Lyytinen K, Rose GM (2003) The disruptive nature of information technology innovations: the case of internet computing in systems development organizations. MIS Q 27(4):557–596.
5. Nambisan S (2018) Architecture vs. ecosystem perspectives: reflections on digital innovation. Inf Organ Inf Organ 28(2):104–106.
6. Planet Money podcast “Antitrust 3: Big Tech”https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2018/10/25/amazon-launches-auction-marketplace-to-liquidate-returns/.
7. https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation
8. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/19/ebay-continues-shift-to-amazon-esque-business/
9. https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/19/ebay-continues-shift-to-amazon-esque-business/
10. https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2018/10/25/amazon-launches-auction-marketplace-to-liquidate-returns/
11. https://www.ecommercebytes.com/2018/10/25/amazon-launches-auction-marketplace-to-liquidate-returns/