eBay to Millennial's: We Are Much More Than Auctions

  It does not come as a surprise to anyone that Amazon dominates the eCommerce market. Ebay debuted in 1995 as the first of its kind: a premier online auction site. After the websites debut, word spread quickly about the fun & competitive experience a user could have on ebay. What originally made ebay unique was the idea that users could sell personal items that were either new/used, and at the price that they thought it was worth. Sellers also loved the idea of a bidding war erupting over their item which resulted in them getting more money than they originally asked for. Times have changed.
  Fast forward to 2016...ebay is no longer the sole dominator in the ecommerce market. The beginning of the end for ebay was when big-name retailers like Target and Walmart began selling their products online.  However, the nail in ebay's coffin was the creation and quick rise of Amazon. What originally separated ebay and Amazon was that Amazon users paid a set price for items with zero chance of negotiation. Many consumers saw the "set price" approach of Amazon to be quicker and easier. Search engines like Google also made accessing price information of products easier so users knew what an items fair dollar value was, which turned them off from using eBay.
 Ebay Vice President of global branding said that his company is aiming to disassociate ebay from being an outdated "auction-type" fad. The company is doing this by offering a set-price for certain items and by redesigning the search feature of the website which now groups items by their price and brand name. The company is also
  Ebay in 2016 is trying to redefine why they exist as a brand, and what it is that they as a company bring to the table. Ebay has also started to brand their boxes and packaging tape with the company's logo to try and increase visibility to the brand. Ebay has also launched a new social media advertising campaign featuring supermodel Karlie Kloss to try and increase visibility of the brand to millennial's.
  This topic is interesting to me because I too always shop on Amazon. Since I first got the iPhone 3G in 2008 I had never dowloaded the ebay app until July of 2016. The only reason I downloaded ebay was because Amazon did not have the variety of a product that I was looking for. On Ebay I found everything I was looking for and was actually surprised of the "buy now" feature where you could pay a little bit more for an item in order to skip the auction process. I now regularily search both Amazon and eBay for products.