In the e-commerce industry Ebay.com stands tall and proud, being the auction giant of the world they have been able to tap into various parts of the world. Users from Asia, Europe and North America account for Ebay’s largest market space. However, this leave the Latin American part of the world unaccounted for; where there seems to be great potential for success that keeps growing every day. With ebay.com having majority market space in the world and Latin America, with a rapidly growing online population of about 21% being online and large number of remote villages without major shopping centers, Latin America presented an unprecedented opportunity for an eBay-like site where merchants could sell goods directly to shoppers, for a fee.
As a result, Marcos Galperin started mercadolibre.com, which is now the Ebay of Latin America. One thing is for sure, that Ebay.com has had strong influence in Mercadolibre, indeed, Galperin has modeled MercadoLibre on U.S. e-commerce pioneers, especially eBay, which has been closely involved in its development for six years. Galperin says, “But we always knew that we needed to change stuff to make it work in Latin America.” EBay’s influence is clear in MercadoLibre’s design, which bears a likeness to eBay’s yellow and white site and is similarly organized. Like eBay sellers, MercadoLibre merchants deal directly with their customers via message boards and are responsible for promoting, selling, and arranging delivery.
Conclusively, there seems to be some unclear answers as to just how similar these sites are. Nevertheless, team 3 will conduct research on both sites and provide in depth analysis and comparison on both B2C sites. Looking closely at Business models, EC business strategies (market, pricing and sale strategy), market analysis, industry analysis, and more importantly: Why did Ebay.com become partners with Mercadolibre.com?
