Conducting International Business at eBay: The Determinants of Success of e-Stores

Many small businesses have started to use eBay as their electronic commerce platform. Such a strategy increases their reach to global customers without high financial and technical costs in building their own ecommerce infrastructure or in intense advertising. How can these e-stores conduct successful international business on eBay? This paper addresses this complex issue by discussing how online customers’ perceptions of an e-store’s culture, size, and history affect the e-store’s feedback rating and successful sales. We analyze data of the completed transactions of 400+ e-stores on eBay across twenty-two countries. The results suggest that feedback rating is a significant determinant of the success of an e-store, and that an e-store’s culture, size, and history significantly affect the e-store’s