Ebay entered in the Chinese market in 2002 while acquiring EachNet. When they launched the website in China, the owners expected the company to be successful. The business model seems to be adapted. However in reality they applied the same business model in China that they were using across the world because it was a successful one. In this way, they did not take into consideration the cultural differences and the specificity of the Chinese market. The business model consisted of charging a small transaction fee for listings and sales made via costumer to customer websites.
First of all, Ebay was used by consumers in order to buy products directly from official shops. People don’t really do C2C business for buying used products, especially because small businesses can suggest cheap products to consumers. Indeed, for both sides, sellers and buyers prefer to deal with fixed prices rather than auction.
A different environment
The platform failed to recognize and consider the differences in the Chinese business environment. The manager staff was from Germany and the United States. Consequently, there is a language barrier and insufficient understanding of the local market. Concerning Taobao, which can be considered a competitor they managed to hire Chinese people to handle the business. These people could understand in the best way the Chinese culture. Actually, the name of the platform has a significant meaning which means to dig for treasure. Even though Ebay tried to adopt a Chinese name it was not as catchy as Taobao one.
Marketing tools
In China, the reputation of your brand is very important and can have a significant impact on your business. One of the main issues of Ebay in China stems from the fact that the brand had not the same strength as in the United States. This is why, even if the executive power intended to settle an effective promotion strategy by diffusing many ads on television.
Buyers were a bit reluctant about doing online payments instead of paying upon receipt of products. They should have adapted products and services to local costumers but instead of that they continued to use the website as a global platform format.
Ebay in China
Taobao worked with most of the local banks in China in order to carve out a strong secured network for online banking. Nonetheless, on eBay consumers could only pay via PayPal, credit cards, and some debit cards from local banks. Online banking was quite limited. This point discouraged consumers to purchase goods on the website.
In order to better understand why eBay failed in China, we can have a deep look at Tao Bao strategy. Tao Bao worked hard to build a reliable relationship with Chinese costumers in order, to create something called “swift guanxi”. This Chinese concept aims at building a close and pervasive interpersonal relationship. The goal is to favor high-quality social interactions and the exchange of mutual benefits. This principle is very important if one wants to be successful in China. Understanding the consumers and penetrating their comprehensive environment and life can make a difference.
Everything on Taobao is though for the purpose of making life easier for the customer. There is a section of instant messaging in which customers can exchange with sellers in order to have information about the products they want to buy. The American company failed in this aspect. They did not really consider the fact that Chinese consumers have a real need to have others’ opinions.
Using computer-mediated communication technologies in associated is very essential.
Failure of integration of the Chinese market
One of the major issues of eBay was that they were too confident about its popularity in the Chinese market. They thought that doing business would be exactly the same. This is the same problem regarding the customers’ behaviors. They did not recognize the differences between the Chinese and American markets.
Actually, competition is very hard in China. Even if, in some cases as a foreign brand you have much more weight than Chinese brands. This is not the case regarding the e-commerce platform. Taobao is very powerful in China and has invested in the advertisement, and promotion but also in tools in order to optimize the website. They made the choice to put money into television. They realized that it was the best way to invest instead of putting money on internet sites. In spite of millions and millions of dollars that eBay spent in order to stay in the competition, their opponents did a better job because they took into consideration the full market.
In addition, eBay creators should have employed Chinese people to integrate their teams. It would have been very useful because these people could have handled better the language and all the features of the Chinese market. Asking for help could have been useful to take benefit from their knowledge and experience regarding the Chinese market.
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2 comments
Mouloud
Hello
I would like to contact ebay resellers in China ? Can you help us with that ?
I want to sell in China, do you recommand ebay ?
It sold handbads, set and clothing
Olivier
Hello Mouloud,
We can help you to sell, but we think that in China Ebay is not the best match as explained in this article.
We can give you solution for Taobao, Tmall, JD or WeChat .. Send us an email with your project.