Stratégie d'e-Bay en Chine : alliance ou acquisition ?

The first company that makes it possible, across the board, was ebay. In fact, in this online auction house (like taobao.com and alibaba.com in China), buyers and sellers never meet, they exchange money against goods and the company ebay doesn't have to be involved in the most important and expensive part of the e-commerce (or e-business) which is shipping the product (this part is in charge of the seller.).
ebay, and in general all the online auctions that we have, are the true embodiment of a "frictionless marketplace."

In some countries like China, where retail is more a combative process with customers and retailers fixed their prices for every kind of good, an auction system where buyers and sellers never meet and the price only goes up over the time was going to have a tough time reaching the mainstream. But in 2003, Each Net (which is the chinese name of ebay) became a very successful and a strong company in China and held the most important part of the online auction market in China.
Today there are many competitors in the local market, like TaoBao.com or alibaba.com. In China, e-commerce in general rose over 60% from 2004 to 2005, which represent a growth from $43 billion in 2004 to $70 billion in 2005.
It is important to underline the fact that these statistics are very important for the China and the main opportunities in the country, because we have not seen a huge growth like this in the USA online market in six years.