eBay 2011 Annual Report Download - page 13

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 13 of the 2011 eBay annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 159

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124
  • 125
  • 126
  • 127
  • 128
  • 129
  • 130
  • 131
  • 132
  • 133
  • 134
  • 135
  • 136
  • 137
  • 138
  • 139
  • 140
  • 141
  • 142
  • 143
  • 144
  • 145
  • 146
  • 147
  • 148
  • 149
  • 150
  • 151
  • 152
  • 153
  • 154
  • 155
  • 156
  • 157
  • 158
  • 159

GSI Fulfillment & Freight services help retailers manage logistics complexities.
GSI operates six ecommerce fulfillment centers in the United States, one in Canada and one in the United Kingdom, encompassing over
3.2 million square feet. Within these facilities, GSI utilizes warehouse management systems and infrastructure to provide customized direct-to-
consumer fulfillment solutions, including order management, real-time order status updates and reverse logistics services. Through scale and
partnerships with leading freight providers, GSI offers clients favorable shipping rates and innovative freight programs, including its ShipQuik
shipping program. Under this program, packages are presorted by customer zip code, which helps to shorten the time packages are in transit.
GSI Customer Care services provide retailers with integrated customer support for their online web stores.
Through three call centers in the United States and a network of customer support agents, plus one call center in the United Kingdom, GSI
provides customer care services for ecommerce via telephone and email. GSI combines proprietary and third-party technologies, including
automatic call distribution, computer telephony integration, interactive voice response, email, workforce management, voice recording/monitoring
and customer relationship management systems in the customer care platform. The United Kingdom call center offers customer care in
multiple languages.
GMS provides retailers with extensive online marketing services
The GMS business unit is focused on providing comprehensive, industry-leading solutions designed to help clients acquire new
customers, convert more visitors into buyers, build significant customer loyalty and drive revenue across various channels. GMS offers a full-
service digital agency, enterprise email marketing, mobile advertising, affiliate marketing, advertisement retargeting, and in-depth analytics
capabilities.
X.commerce
In addition to our reportable segments, in 2011, we launched a business initiative of cloud-based commerce tools called X.commerce.
X.commerce is a platform that provides software developers access to our APIs to develop functionality for merchants of all sizes. By bringing
together the technology assets and developer communities of eBay, PayPal and Magento, an ecommerce storefront platform we acquired in
August 2011, the X.commerce ecosystem provides tools that are designed to drive innovation for online, mobile, social and local commerce.
Merchants can use these tools to create web storefronts, track sales and collect payments. We also have an application store called Magento
Connect where developers can market and sell add-on functionality and solutions to merchants that use a Magento storefront.
Communications
Previously, we had a Communications reportable segment which consisted of Skype. Skype offers a way for people around the world to
stay in touch over the Internet through free voice and video calls, sending instant messages, SMS (text messaging) or files, and by making low-
cost calls to landline and mobile numbers.
In November 2009, we completed the sale of Skype to an entity (Buyer) owned and organized by an investor group. As part of the sale, we
maintained a 30 percent equity interest in the outstanding capital stock of the Buyer. Skype was consolidated with our results of operations
through the date that the sale of Skype was completed. In October 2011, we sold our remaining equity stake in the Buyer to Microsoft Corp. For
additional details related to the sale of Skype, please see "Note 4 – Skype Related Transactions" to the consolidated financial statements included
in this report.
Competition
We encounter vigorous competition in our businesses from numerous sources. For our Marketplaces segment, our users can find, buy, sell
and pay for similar items through a variety of competing online, mobile and offline channels. These include, but are not limited to, retailers,
distributors, liquidators, import and export companies, auctioneers, catalog and mail-order companies, classifieds, directories, search engines,
commerce participants (consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-
business), shopping channels and networks. As our product
offerings continue to broaden into new categories of items and new commerce formats, we expect to face additional competition from other
online, mobile and offline channels for those new offerings. We compete on the basis of price, product selection and services.
For our Payments segment, our users may choose to pay through a variety of alternative means, including credit and debit cards, automated
clearing house and bank wires, other online payment services, offline payment methods such as cash, check or money order and using mobile
phones. Likewise, our users may elect to finance their purchases through a broad range of other sources of financing, including credit cards, lines
of credit provided by financial institutions and store credit or layaway plans provided by merchants.
9