Brand Revitalisation Strategy And Communication Plan For EBay In UAE

Situation Analysis for eBay in UAE

The target of this report is to provide a detailed and complete breakdown of a brand revitalisation strategy and a communication plan to generate better engagement and acceleration for one of the globally renowned e-commerce platforms, eBay, for the target market of UAE. In this rapidly changing global economic order, it is important for brands to constantly innovate and update their existing business and corporate structure and framework to better suit the needs of the current and the future market trends and environment (Okanga 2018). The aim of this report is to get the approval of the Board of Directors and the CEO of the Corporation to gain their support and approval for the Marketing Strategy. The following report will enumerate the details about eBay as the brand in question and UAE as the target market, coupled with a suitable situation analysis and brand audit, to develop a conceptual map for the brand (Bayazovna 2020). The report will further provide a detailed communication strategy based on the media landscape of the brand, as well as the customer personas and current customer analysis of eBay. The report will summarise the Key Performance Indexes and Metrices that are essential for the communication strategy and for brand revitalisation (Morgan et al. 2019). The report is aimed at creating a comprehensive and elaborate guideline for eBay to create an overall holistic approach towards the brand revitalisation strategy and the brand communication strategy to compliment the broader brand marketing strategy. This is important for eBay to increase its market capitalisation, presence, visibility and relevance with the Middle Eastern context and create an organisation that is in direct line with its biggest competitor, Amazon. This report will provide a clear and succent information based and data driven orientation of the task and demonstrate the same.

Situation Analysis is vital to understand the health of the business, before venturing into the marketing strategy. The situation of a brand can be analysed via various factors like competitive situation, product situation, environmental factors, distribution situation, and risks and opportunity analysis. These elements are vital in positioning the brand in respect to the current market and analyse its viability and feasibility in the existing micro and macro level scenarios (Stevens et al. 2021). this report will conduct a situation analysis for eBay in the UAE.

For eBay, the Micro Situation Analysis will be conducted via a relevant Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis. The purpose of the SWOT Analysis is to analyse the internal components of eBay and dissect its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats to create an organisation specific revitalisation and band communication strategy to compliment the broader marketing strategy (Benzaghta et al. 2021).

For eBay, in the UAE, the Macro Situation Analysis will be complimented via a relevant Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal (PESTEL) Analysis to understand and assess the viability of the organisation within the UAE. For eBay, it is important for the organisation to understand the various dynamics and working of the external environment, i.e., the various political, social, economic, technological, environmental and legal aspects of the UAE, to understand and analyse the external environment, in direct relation to the e-commerce industry, to analyse eBay’s viability and visibility within the topography of the UAE (Yosri, 2021).

• Political: eBay collects and stores a large amount of data on a regular basis. With rise in data collection, the concerns for privacy are at large. eBay issues a privacy policy but currently, Governments are cracking down on e-commerce and data driven corporations like Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay, to understand the validity of the privacy and data security policies and understand their feasibility and alignment with the privacy protection rights of the various Governments. Also eBay was under scrutiny for the sale of firearms via their website in the United States (de Sousa and Castañeda 2022).
• Economic: The sellers on eBay are global and are not restricted by geographic or economic barriers. This allows eBay to attract a global audience and provide adequate seller representation globally. eBay acts as the economic and connecting vessel for various small, medium and large sellers to consumer bases around the globe (Kara 2018).
• Social: eBay’s popularity is not the same today as it was 1o years ago, thanks to Amazon. However, eBay still today, is a considerable force in the social outlet of the business. eBay helps sellers of any kind sell their products and interact with their customers directly to understand their needs and demands from the market. This leads to social groups creation that are focused in providing the right quantity, quality and kind of product top the final consumer (Ortega et al. 2019).
• Technological: The backbone of eBay’s survival is on technology. Without servers, coding, digital platforms, websites, inventory management systems, and so on, eBay will cripple totally. The entire business model is digital oriented and eBay constantly pushed to update itself from the front and protect customer and company data via high end security and privacy measures (Çitilci and Akbal?k 2020).
• Environmental: eBay focus on making its business sustainable and its key area is online shopping which much more resource focused and reduces the effects of traditional shopping on the environment. eBay is also involved in various environmental projects and partnerships to hone their Corporate Social Responsibility duties (Yosri, 2021).
• Legal: eBay has found itself under legal tangles from time to time and it is entirely due to the actions of the sellers. Sat one point, anyone was allowed to list and sell anything on eBay including prohibited and illegal products. This led to the heavy scrutiny on the company and they were forced to change their seller onboarding and selling laws and legislative business model (de Sousa and Castañeda 2022).

SWOT Analysis

Pierre Omidyar and Jeff Skoll launched the eBay brand in September 1995. They envisioned eBay as a marketplace where people could sell their goods and services. In 1998, Pierre and his cofounder, Meg Whitman, hired seasoned individuals and converted eBay into what it is today, a company and a brand focused on connecting people from all over the world. For them, eBay was about more than just selling to people; it was about creating useful relationships. eBay essentially provides a service. It allows vendors to post their items for sale in a secure and high-traffic environment that is visible to the whole internet globe. It gives consumers access to a one-stop online store where they can safely bid on and subsequently purchase their selected things. Security, accessibility, and availability are three major elements of eBay’s service offerings. Anyone with an internet connection can access and use the online store. eBay’s highly trained team ensures that all transactions take place in a safe and secure online environment. When it comes to price, there is no such thing as a bad deal on eBay! (Liu and Tang 2018).

Brand identity and image goes hand in hand and is often used interchangeably for one another. Brand identity is the recognition of the brand. Brand image is the perception of the brand. eBay enjoys a strong brand image and identity in the market, with the slight tarnishes that had been inflicted by various actions and events within the organisation. The ‘e’ in eBay symbolises the digitized nature of the platform as well as its core business model of e-commerce. Hence, the ‘e’ is in small case and is not a typing error (Im et al. 2022). The current logo of eBay has red, blue, green and yellow colour. This is important for the sensory impact of the brand. The different colours define oneness in spite of differences and portrays its efforts to bring several people and product under one umbrella. The logo also signifies that the brand transcends geographic barriers (Slavov and Zlatanova 2018). eBay follows the Kaufer’s Brand Identity Prism and the De Chernatony Model as depicted in fig 1 and fig 2 of the appendix respectively.

The brand equity makes up the value and significance of a brand. The same goes for eBay. eBay is a multi-million-dollar brand that is spread across several Countries and regions, making it a multinational organisation. eBay enjoyed 16.5% share appreciation in 2021 alone, resulting in its market capitalisation.  This implies high stakeholders’ confidence and valuation for the brand. The brand also enjoys a higher consumer awareness level. The brand is primarily strong in the United States as compared to other regions (Keller and Brexendorf 2019). Also, eBay enjoys a high consumer base with rising number of customers daily due to the availability of unique and useful products at aggressive and competitive pricing. It is evident that eBay uses the Keller’s Brand Equity Pyramid to present its brand equity (Tasci 2020). The same is depicted in fig 3 of the appendix.

Strengths

The loyalty of customers towards brand is the most important factor in customer harnessing and customer retention. For eBay working on active feedbacks and the maintenance of positive relationships with the customers is crucial for the business. Product personalisation and fraud protection can be certain ways to improve brand loyalty as well. This will harness the existing customers and attract newer ones (Bilgin 2018). eBay also to improve its brand loyalty, work on its brand personality that will allow users to project confidence and trust on the brand and return again to the brand for their purchase decisions. Harnessing, collaboration and partnerships with well recognized individuals and brands can also improve the brand loyalty of the Company (Li, Teng and Chen 2020)

The image below provides the components of brand pyramid for eBay

Image: Brand Pyramid for eBay

Source: By the Author

A relevant buyer persona is provided in the attached Power Point Presentation file.

The existing customers of any brand form the base of the brand and the analysis of their composition and density can reveal a lot about the brand, its product and services and the reason behind the customer base’s existence. The same goes for eBay. Its buyer’s composition is an indication of the current attributes of the brand as well as an indication for what can be the potential customer composition for the brand. The customers for the most important aspect of eBay, being an ecommerce platform and allows for the smooth busi9ness and transitioning of the brand. Hence, to understand the customer composition of the brand, it can be divided under current and potential customers (Erkmen and Hancer 2019).

eBay enjoys a large current customer base, with a wide range of customers with varying needs and wants. eBay has over 1 billion active listings of products and more than 300 million active users. eBay has seen a rise in the number of users during the Covid-19 pandemic buy almost 180 million new users. eBay has a growing customer base and it has been integral in strong holding its position in places like the UAE and India. eBay has both B2B and B2C customer orientation, where customers can avail of various products from the website, as well as services offered to various businesses in the form of web hosting and marketplace facilities. eBay has been in existence for 26 years and has been emerging as a global e-commerce platform just behind Amazon. eBay generated over ten billion United States dollar in revenue in the year 2020 – 2021 alone. eBay handles over two billion daily transactions and the same rose in 2021 to 2.8 billion transactions. The age group of eBay’s customer base is between 35 and 65 years, and make up about 80% of its audience. eBay has so far failed to capture the Generation Z and the youth of the World (Busser and Shulga 2019).

The newer generation that is Generation Z is the potential customer for eBay without a doubt. eBay should venture into business practices like marketing and social media campaigns to lure in the young generation of the Global population and build a generational brand that caters to every age group within the society in one way or the other. This will help eBay gain the growing market base of the youth and generate double the revenue it is experiencing today. Due to large amount of information gap, most young people prefer Amazon over eBay, and this creates issues for eBay, as it tends to lose its customers to Amazon. eBay also lacks in the technologically savvy people who prefer the UI and UX of platforms like Amazon more than that of eBay, due to its lack of modern and refined looks and visual perceptions. It is also difficult to readily earn the trusts of the young population due to their higher techno logical and social perception and knowledge. Also, lack of personalised brands and sellers’ reputation discourages the young people to associate with eBay. It is no doubt that the Generation Z is the most important and the potential customer of eBay, to build a generational brand and a brand that passes on from one age group to another to stay relevant and exist in its identity within the society (Ahn et al. 2019).

Weaknesses

Hence, it can be said that the brand landscape of the brand eBay is quite dense among the middle aged and the older people, due to its traditional roots and business models. To succeed in the UAE, eBay will need to target the youth of the place, especially the influencers and the social media sensations to build a brand on the terms of collaborations, associations, partnerships and sponsorships. This will allow the brand to onboard premium and popular brands in the UAE and attract customers via personalised product presentation and offerings. Attractive offers are also essential to attract the youth of the UAE and building a strong foundation on trust and security is extremely essential for eBay among the people of the UAE.

As per the two customer profiles recognised in the previous segment, social media marketing is the most important and relevant media landscape for eBay. This is because eBay will need to capitalise on its social media presence and boost its business based on its social media reach and excellence. Specific social media platforms are to be targeted to create the desired media effect and get access to the entire digital audience base. This will allow the business to scale up its e-commerce platform and gain significant social momentum in penetrating the seemingly untapped Generation Z market. As it is understood from the previous two profiles, both the customers are active social media users and have an active social media presence and their buying and purchase perceptions are largely influenced by social media. The social media strategy will enable eBay to keep its digital goals and objectives at the forefront and create a truly digital enterprise via social influence and community building (Lupo 2018).

The most important social media platforms for eBay to leverage are enumerated below –

• Instagram: Instagram is one of the most important and popular social media platforms these days with more than one billion active users daily. This will provide the brand with the much needed audience base for its marketplace. Also, eBay can get into associations, partnerships and promotions with various social media influencers to reach a larger and already defined audience. eBay will need to spend well to get these done in order to make people visit its websites and incur purchases. eBay can also localise its product offerings by offering personalisation and information about the same on Instagram. eBay can run Instagram advertisements, top searches, limited offers, sales, loyalty programs, community building and so on to attract the younger and active generation to its platform (Lupo 2018).
• Facebook: eBay can actually spend less and gain more from Facebook. Facebook being the oldest and the very first social media platform has a huge population base. eBay an integrate its marketplace with Facebook Marketplace to create an unified offerings for the users and run affiliate advertisements and marketing to increase website visits and sales. This will allow eBay to actually catapult its online business strategy by spending less and taking use of existing platforms and advantages offered by Facebook. eBay can even collaborate with the top sellers in the Facebook Marketplace to create its own unique and customized specialised offerings to the people to attract new customers and potential return customers (Obermayer 2018).

Hence, it is evident that for eBay to capitalise on its business it will need to understand the importance and impact of social media on its business and harnessing the youth of the world. It is also important for the Company to build strategic partnerships and relationships with the influencer and affiliate market to attract new potential customers and divert the traffic towards itself. It is extremely crucial for eBay to stay true to its digital facet and framework of operations and stay true to its digital promise and parameters of the brand.

A communication strategy is essential for eBay to penetrate the UAE market and establish itself.

Objectives

• To create regular posts and engagement plans.
• To offer platform specific offers to the audience.
• To analyse the customer engagement via analytics.
• To monitor the number of website clicks based on link visits.
• To increase the sales by 40%.
• To boost revenue by 20%.
• To increase the level of Generation Z interaction and engagement by 10%.
• To harness the popular brands and influencers in UAE, to collaborate with them.
• To build an online community of buyers and sellers.
• To provide aggressive pricing and attractive offers to the people of the UAE
• To build a clear brand image and message via its social media platforms.
• To offer specialised products in the UAE (Bayazovna 2020).

Engagement

eBay can increase its engagement to increase sales and revenue buy optimising its advertisements and platforms in the form of websites and social media posts. This will allow eBay to extract more website visits and clicks, ensuring more time spent on their platform. The same can be done via exclusive products offerings and brand and celebrity associations. This will psychologically persuade the customers to explore the offerings and visit the website to understand the various products and the services provided. eBay can run product or customer exclusive offers to incentivise its sales and make it more value for its customers. This will allow the brand to not only capitalise on its communication strategy but also solidify the same with key components and metrices to make it future proof and current, so that the bran can add on to the same as it goes forward in time (Bekessy et al. 2018).

Opportunities

A relevant customer journey map is provided in the power point presentation of 100 words.

The key metrices and performance evaluative indicators that eBay can use are as follows –

• Website visits.
• Time spent on the web page
• Time spent on the product page.
• Customer engagement,
• Google AdSense
• Instagram advertisement metrices.
• Facebook Marketplace
• Per clicks.
• Social media post engagements in the form of likes, shares and saves.
• Social media followers.
• Influencer engagements and associations.
• Brand associations (Il’ia et al.2018).

Conclusion

The above paper concludes the report by creating a relevant brand revitalisation strategy and communication strategy for the brand eBay and for the targeted market of UAE. This report has been created with the aim to be presented to the CEO and the Board of Directors for their approval and opinion on the same. This brand revitalisation and communication strategy is the key for eBay to establish its position strategically within the United Arab Emirates as an e-commerce brand with prowess and increase their popularity and demand within the UAE market. The report successfully introduces the company and the chosen target market and also outlines the various components of the report, stating the composition and working of the report. The report then successfully conducts a situation analysis in the form of SWOT and PESTEL to understand the micro and macro level environment of eBay and the UAE. The report then successfully conducts a relevant brand audit while explaining the key associations and perceptions of the brand. The report also successfully states the current customer composition of eBay and develops two customer personas to help the organisation understand the current and targeted market composition. The report also dwells into the media landscape of the UAE to understand the most relevant media to use by eBay to successfully initiate their communication and revitalisation campaigns, to increase their reach and effect in the market. The report also proposes a detailed communication strategy to strategically approach the market, to allow the brand to create a future reach for the brand and conduct a relevant communication campaign. The report also outlines the primary and the key metrices to understand the communication landscape and measure the key indices and performance indicators of the communication campaign. The report outlines a detailed brand communication and revitalisation strategy.

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