Marketing Mix: Ebay

Let me start this off by saying that I am an Ebay junkie. I have bought products from niche jewelry, to upscale jewelry, to music and movies, to car parts and everything in between. I've always gotten a stellar deal, and with their feedback system, have been able to choose upstanding sellers to ensure that I get a quality product and service.

A marketing mix is defined as four marketing activities: product, distribution, promotion, and pricing that a firm can control to meet the needs of customers within its target markets. EBay's marketing mix is mostly centralized upon price and place. With its pricing mix being convenient for both sellers' and buyers' needs, Ebay has been able to enhance their services to cater for a diversity of needs. You can find items for bidding or items to just buy now. In terms of place, Ebay has enabled and created a platform upon which buyers and sellers can conveniently come together for a common purpose-sell and buy products. EBay's place mix enables competition to thrive such that both buyers and sellers get the best deals possible.

In terms if the marketing mix differing from the traditional "brick and mortar" type, it has been able to embrace the use of technology at every turn. Ebay gives its users the flexibility to manage their own products to suit whatever purpose they so desire. It does not impose anything on anyone, all that Ebay requires is for the users to be professional and uphold integrity so as to avoid conflict of interest amongst the users. By offering buyers the chance to bid on products, it immediately gives them the power to select prices they feel would be low enough to cater for the needed discounts they want. The sellers are also able to sell their products as low as they desire since there is no centralized store where all the products are sold from; rather, every seller can sell at whatever price they feel caters for their respective needs. Many sellers even use an "or best offer" option, where you can actually offer them what you think is fair, and they either accept your offer or decline. I've gotten some outstanding deals this way.

The reasons for EBay's huge success primarily lie in its brand name as a site. EBay's mission statement reads "We help people trade practically anything on earth." This is true. Ebay has over the years been able to establish itself as a great platform in which buyers and sellers from all over the world can place their items for sale and purchase, with the website being able to offer a diversity of products probably not found anywhere else. After all, sellers can even sell toothpicks as long as a buyer needed one at the price offered. Ebay offers limitless possibilities as to the kind of things its users can trade it, thus the magnitude of success the corporation has been able to enjoy consistently for over a decade.