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In 1995 Pierre Omidyar founded Ebay here in Campbell. EBay is a website where you can buy and sell both brand new and second hand goods. The website has evolved since its inception, and now has fixed price sales as well as auction selling formats available for its users. Just twenty plus years later EBay is a multibillion-dollar business, which has expanded to operate in over thirty countries.

Campbell tutors refer to this type of business as ‘e-commerce’. EBay users sell directly to one another with no need to contact EBay at all. Professionally this type of sales model is called consumer-to-consumer sales. EBay users use the templates given to set up and correctly structure a personalized advertisement for their item. It is simple to do following the website guidelines. To keep you on track, you must fill in numerous fields in order to publish the sale. These fields include “Title”, “size”, “color”, “shipping info” etc. It is very user friendly and straightforward to use and a transaction with another user can be accomplished very easily. There is often no reason for EBay to have any input in your sale or purchase. The normal reason for contacting EBay directly would be if there were issues with the sale. Sometimes goods are not properly or adequately described, sometimes there is damage with shipping, or issues with payment for example, which necessitates them to step in and help resolve the issue. This gives EBay users peace of mind that they can trust the website to help sell their goods and receive the promised payment. For this peace of mind sellers give EBay a commission which is a set percentage of the sale amount. EBay also makes money through offering users ways of making their advertisements stand out when a potential buyer searches for a specific item. This might be that their advertisement pops up at the top of the list, or that it shows up in a different eye-catching color, or in bold for example.

With the development of the internet and growth in accessibility to the population at large many businesses suddenly popped up trying to offer a service which had never before been available or even possible. Campbell tutors note that prior to e-commerce, buying an item would have involved going into a retail establishment and picking up and paying for that item. With regards to second hand sales, the only way to buy these items was at thrift stores. There was no market as such for second hand sales. Thrift stores sold items that had been discarded by their original owner, often given up rather than being thrown away with the hopes that a few dollars could be raised to give to charity. Suddenly people realized that an income could be generated from selling gently worn or used items, as well as collectors items and antiques. Ebay provided the means to get an audience to see these second hand items and (as the website grew) reach millions of potential customers.