The reasons for the failure of EBay to set its base in Japan Case Study

The reasons for the failure of EBay to set its base in Japan - Case Study Example The reasons for the failure of EBay to set its base in Japan Method: The information used while preparing the report was collected from the case study paper titled â€Å"EBay in Japan: strategic and cultural missteps† written by Indu Perepu and Sachin Govind in 2008. Findings: EBay, a powerful on line trading company for consumer merchandise, enters Japan in 2007 in a partnership with Yahoo to make easy the transnational bidding system. A Japanese website called Sekaiomon was also launched to facilitate shipping and clearance. Previously in 2000 EBay had entered the Japanese market in alliance with NEC Corporation to form EBay Japan. It failed to garner many takers (managed to get only 3% share of the total online market value in Japan) even after waiving off its online transaction fees, and was nowhere near the Yahoo auctions, the number one online bidding website in Japan at that time. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to better its position, eBay finally decided to close it portal in Japan on 31st 2002, and decided instead to concentrate on other Asian markets like, India, China, Philippines and Taiwan. In was only in 2006 after Yahoo shut down its auction websites in US and Canada, and went into an alliance with EBay in these 2 countries, did the latter come into an agreement with Yahoo to re-enter the Japanese market in 2007, though the analysts even then did not predict a bright future for EBay in Japan. Analysis/ Discussion: From the case study it is clear that there are two main reasons for the failure of EBay in Japan.