eBay has competed with advertisements in newspapers, collectible shows, and other venues such as local auction houses and liquidators. As eBay's product mix had broadened beyond collectibles, the company's competitors had broadened to include retailers, and catalog and mail order companies. EBay considered itself to be competing in a broad sense with a number of other online retailers, such as JCPenny and Office Depot. The company also felt that it was competing with a number of specialty retailers online. .
While eBay controlled 64.3 percent of the online auction revenue share in May 2001, uBid.com had emerged as eBay's main competitor during this time. The next three largest competitors, Egghead.com, Yahoo!Auctions, and Amazon Auctions, represented less than 10 percent of the revenue share in the online auction market in mid-2001. Ebay considered several factors-such as the ability to attract buyers, the volume of transactions and selection of goods, customer service, and brand recognition-as being the most important competitive factors in the online auction industry. The management of eBay saw traditional competitors as inefficient because their fragmented local and regional nature made it expensive and time consuming for buyers and sellers to meet, exchange information, and complete transactions. Ebay's management saw its online auction format as competitively superior to their rivals because it facilitated buyers and sellers meetings, exchanging the pertinent information, and conducting the transactions; it allowed buyers and sellers to bypass traditional intermediaries and trade directly, thus lowering costs. They also thought they were superior over their competitors because they permitted trading at all hours of the day and they fostered a sense of community among individuals with mutual interests.
UBid.com and Amazon's acquisition of Egghead.