This Blog has been created as a forum for Milwaukee School of Engineering, Rader School of Business students to comment on various issues related to the subject matter of our class. The class, "Strategic Branding" is an elective class in the graduate management program. The views expressed are those of the students individually and not of the professor or the university.
What is the ebay brand? How big is the brand? How much brand equity does it carry? How loyal are people to ebay?
posted by Gene A. Wright @ 10:27 AM
This Blog has been created as a forum for Milwaukee School of Engineering, Rader School of Business students to comment on various issues related to the subject matter of our class. The class, "Strategic Branding" is an elective class in the graduate management program. The views expressed are those of the students individually and not of the professor or the university.
2 Comments:
I think David Kiley's posting brings up a bunch of good points. Ebay had a very good idea at the right time, and was able to expand globally and get lots of brand awareness. Similar to Google, and I guess that's why I can use my Google account to post something here.
Anyway, the difference to Google is, that, what Kiley says, it's liek working for Sears. They maybe got too bog too fast, got away from the initial cozy "come in at 9 AM and we all have brakfast together" .com startup and turned into that massive empire. This empire now thinks they can use their image and lvergae on it no matter what. The Buick way ignoring Hyundays.
But as jen said, they got greedy. They thought they can charge ridiculuous amounts, and I read reports that they pretty much upset the whole league of their power sellers with other changes, too (don't remember exacctly). All that, I believe, based on the fact that they were pretty much the only ones around. What else is there for private users? Yahoo auctions are useless, and I don't know any others here.
So they still have a lot of leverage in their brand, I think. But I also think it's fading away, but only slowly. Sites like Craig's List and Postaroo - similar categories - are coming up.
However, eBay lives not only from sellers who might be upset and go somewhere else. Their brand is still very strong with buyers. Liek everybody "googles" for something, you sell your grandma's coffee table on eBay. That's the name that's out there, everybody knows it. And you might want to sell your stuff where you have a big pool of potential buyers.
Bottom line: I think eBay is still string, but does some things that will hurt them in the long run. And it's just a matter of time until a competitor takes over, like Google ran past Yahoo and others.
PS: That Google account stuff didn't work, maybe I use my ebay account....
I find all this of interest because I’m new eBay’s customer. I like talking to the people I deal with rather than having a preset platform, like an auction, decide price. Some people whom I have talked that have used eBay have had problems. It seems the web is a different place than when eBay took it's first breath. For example I ordered a book last month, but the order has been cancelled because the item is unavailable. And they told me there are many possibilities as to why the bookseller marked the book(s) unavailable:
- It may have been previously sold and not yet removed from our database.
- The book was sold to a walk-in customer in the bookseller's store
- There may have been a previous hold on the book
- The book was misplaced but the bookseller did not realize it was missing until they tried to locate it.
What's the alternative? A colleague recommended me to try abebooks website www.abebooks.com. Fortunately the book prices were lower than ebay. Evidently ebay lose its brand and need to reconsider its competitive strategy, the idea or concept that is supposed to deliver advantage over competitors or even a unique status in the eyes of the consumers.
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