Ebay And Its Social Impact
eBay was founded in the year 1995 by Pierre Omidyar (Kenny 2018, para.6). eBay is a website that allows people to buy and sell goods and services on the Internet. It has become extremely popular since the launch and almost everyone use, know, have even heard and recognized the website as one of the main online shopping sites. Further, many other creators have jumped into the bandwagon and created innovative online shopping websites which were initiated by mainly eBay and other online shopping website pioneers. The social impact that eBay has created is revolutionary because it has become a household name worldwide.
In the present world, a user has access to many online shopping websites such as Amazon, Ali Express and many more. These websites facilitate people to run their own businesses and earn a living similar to what eBay is providing. However, eBay mainly serves as an auction site and many sellers use this website and according to statistics eBay got 129 million organic traffic while Amazon got 5 times of it. This ensures that society lean more towards Amazon when it comes to selling and buying goods and services. Although, Amazon has its popularity, eBay pioneers third party business marketplace and helps to upsurge the economic growth all over the world which is one aspect of social impact. This impact is dynamic since many websites similar to eBay is gaining popularity each passing day.
eBay has helped over 7 million people who are suffering because of poverty to buy affordable goods and products and this is a positive impact created by the website. The impact created is indeed long term as poverty is an ongoing problem and anyone with a low income will always purchase low priced products. On the other hand, there are college kids who do reselling to earn money where they buy products from garage sales and sell them on eBay which is again a social impact because this kind of ways to earn money helps a person to afford a living and pay their bills at the end of the day.
The negative impact when considering social impact is when scammers get on board and rob poor people’s money, for example, a buyer will pay 40 bucks for a skateboard and the seller will take the money and close the account and the buyer won’t have any evidence.
In conclusion, eBay will have a social impact dynamically because of other competitive online shopping websites but since eBay has made a name for themselves throughout the years and many people who are looking to run their own business will start on eBay because of its popularity and reliability. In the future, if eBay keeps on upgrading their values, security and add more benefits, it will definitely have a long-lasting, positive impact on the society.
