What eBay Could Learn from Craigslist
Craiglist is a privately held company running a community-based website specialising in local news and events. The company has been profitable since 1999, has no debts and is growing at a triple digit rate.
Founded at around the same time as eBay in 1995, Craiglist has grown from it’s origins as a local community service provider in the San Francisco Bay Area to now cover 120 cities across 25 countries and serving 2.4 billion pages every month.
Both eBay and Craiglist started with a similar community-based approach but the companies’ strategies have since diverged, with Craiglist still emphasising the “local community” aspects of its services, while eBay on the other hand has emphasised the “global community” aspect by offering integrated auctions across countries and continents.
Both approaches have their strengths, but perhaps eBay could learn one or two lessons from the Craiglist “local community” strategy. Why? – well one of the major concerns of eBay shops and sellers these days is that the increasing globalisation of eBay will introduce strong price competition from the low-cost countries in which eBay is now aggressively active, including India and China.
One of the ways that local eBay communities can help themselves is by joining country or regionally-based eBay Shops and sellers directories which benefit from local promotional activities in addition to the overall “brand awareness” brought by eBay.
Founded at around the same time as eBay in 1995, Craiglist has grown from it’s origins as a local community service provider in the San Francisco Bay Area to now cover 120 cities across 25 countries and serving 2.4 billion pages every month.
Both eBay and Craiglist started with a similar community-based approach but the companies’ strategies have since diverged, with Craiglist still emphasising the “local community” aspects of its services, while eBay on the other hand has emphasised the “global community” aspect by offering integrated auctions across countries and continents.
Both approaches have their strengths, but perhaps eBay could learn one or two lessons from the Craiglist “local community” strategy. Why? – well one of the major concerns of eBay shops and sellers these days is that the increasing globalisation of eBay will introduce strong price competition from the low-cost countries in which eBay is now aggressively active, including India and China.
One of the ways that local eBay communities can help themselves is by joining country or regionally-based eBay Shops and sellers directories which benefit from local promotional activities in addition to the overall “brand awareness” brought by eBay.
