Business Case Studies, Leadership Case Study, Tata Group,Ratan Tata

Code : COM0007

Year : 2003

Industry : Internet and e-commerce

Region : USA

Teaching Note:Not Available

Structured Assignment :Not Available

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Introduction:In just eight years since its inception in the mid-1990s, eBay transformed itself from an ordinary auction site to an e-commerce powerhouse. Founded as a hobby by a young Silicon valley computer programmer named Pierre Omidyar, eBay became one of the most illustrious success stories to come out of the dot-com boom of the 1990s.

Unlike most Internet companies like Amazon.com and Yahoo!, eBay was profitable from the first month of its launch. The company witnessed its foremost growth under the leadership of its present CEO Meg Whitman (Whitman), who revamped eBay into a recognisable online brand. By 2003, Whitman made eBay the world's largest online auction company with 5000 employees serving 62 million registered users globally.

With Fortune 500 companies unloading inventory through it, eBay became one of those unstoppable business phenomena like McDonald's in the 1970s or Wal-Mart in 1980s.