EBay Steps Up Asian Expansion

1. Includes a link to the article.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2008/tc20080813_371494.htm

2. Includes a short summary of the article:

The article is about Electronic commerce giant, Ebay attempting to expand overseas and to increase its growth by acquiring a minority stake in in Korean e-commerce giant Gmarket worth $404 million as of Aug 12.

3. Identifies the topic(s) from our syllabus that the article covers.

1.7 – Growth and Evolution
- External Growth

4. Applies one business tool/theory/technique to the organization.

The article had shown that in order to increase competitiveness within the global market, expansion would be necessary. Therefore, I believe it was a wise strategy that it has made a decision to expand into the Asian market as development in developing countries, such as China that are increasing rapidly in recent years. By purchasing the stake, it would benefit the company in numerous ways. As the article mentioned, it would counter competition for Asian e-commerce from Yahoo and help to expand its core shopping business to new markets. This would also increase customer base resulting in more profit made. Due to the increased competition within the Asian market in recent years, such acquisition would also help E-bay to achieve its long-held aim of expanding beyond only U.S. and Europe.

The company’s decision to expand was because it was making profit and therefore can “lookout to make acquisitions to bolster its shopping business”. Although in this acquisition, e-Bay only purchased a minority stake, the company was successful in using it for acquisition or takeover even though e-Bay does not plan to acquire all of Gmarket yet.