IT Work - Ebay

What I have to do:

Visit eBay (you may have to use ebay.ie - when in school)
Then write a short document in your blog on what are its major purposes, who is the target audience, how the auction process works, how well it fulfils these purposes, and what are the benefits and limitations of the service. Explain why it is so successful as a shopping model.

Answer:

Ebays main purpose is to get people to sell things in online auctions. You must bid for things that you want against other people.
The target audience are people who want to buy things that they want for less than the recommended retail price.
First someone adds a product that they wish to sell. There is then a set time until the highest bidder wins the item, this depends on the item that is being sold. People will then search for products that they want and if they want your product then they will start to bid on it, they choose an amount to go up to and then they will wait for someone else to bid. After the time runs out the person who has bid the most will win the product. They will then have to agree on a payment method, either by going to the person’s house and giving them cash, through online payment such as paypal or another method like that. They will then also have to agree on how the product will be acquired, usually it is sent to you and there is a little cost of postage and packaging but you can also collect it yourself.
Ebay fulfils these purposes perfectly because it does exactly what it is supposed to do. You can buy and sells things in an online auction and then the rest is up to you, ebay is just a platform on which you can sell things.
The benefits of this service are that you can sell things to anyone across the world who has the internet and is willing to sign up to ebay and place a bid. You don’t have to pay anything to bid unless you win the product, the only thing that you have to pay is to ebay if you are selling the product, usually it is just a small sum that you pay to for them to host the item while you collect all the winnings made from selling the items.
The limitations to the service are that for larger items you must go and get them. Other things include the fact that you do not know the person that is selling the items and they could be scam artists who are selling you non-existent items, they are usually big items too that sell for lots of money, they only accept online payment to so you cannot get your money back.
It is so successful because thousands of people are able to set up small shops without having a huge knowledge of e-commerce as someone else has already made the base to which you are working on. Also people see it as an easy and sometimes fun way to buy things for less than their retail prices. You can also get second hand items that otherwise you wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. Thousands of people everyday buy things that they might not use but think they need because it is going cheap and there is a limited time to get them and you are competing against other people who want it. It brings a small amount of excitement but enough to make you get carried away and sometimes lose out on a large sum of money.