Online marketplace eBay Taiwan has hooked up with two local portals to get a chunk of the nation's growing online opportunities, a senior official at eBay said yesterday.
"To drive traffic and boost eBay Taiwan's user numbers, we've decided to cooperate with PC Home online and Microsoft MSN Taiwan," said Stephanie Tilenius, a vice president at eBay International.
EBay's marketing effort is designed to use Web pages rather than TV or print media to reach potential customers, she said.
California-based eBay Inc paid over US$9.5 million in cash to buy a local e-commerce venture NeoCom Technology Co (
According to Vicky Tseng (
Tseng said this win-win strategy will generate traffic for eBay and boost revenue for PC Home.
"PC Home receives a commission whenever one of their members signs up for eBay," she said.
A market watcher at a government think tank said eBay Taiwan is on the right track.
"The first important step the venture has to take is to boost its user numbers," said Geoffrey Liu (
EBay Taiwan is seeking to take on the king of the nation's online shopping market, Yahoo-Kimo, which ranks No. 1 in the sector with the most site visitors.
"As Taiwan's top Internet portal, Yahoo-Kimo has the edge," he said.
And with the nation's online shopping business still in its infancy, this may be an ideal time for eBay Taiwan to enter the domestic market.
EBay recently gave up fighting for market share in Japan after a two year battle, pulling out at the end of February.
"Prior to eBay entering Japan in 2000, most of Japan's online trading market was dominated by Yahoo Japan Corp," Liu said.
EBay's Tilenius admitted that market share is critical.
"We decided to retreat from Japan because we were not the No. 1 e-commerce operator there," she said.
EBay's market share in Japan was less than 10 percent when they decided to pull out.
"We are sure the situation won't be the same in Taiwan because we are very confident about the Taiwan market and our local management team," she said.
RSS