nes who have a difficult time going international. The Internet has grown rapidly over the past ten years and continues to excelerate. Internet companies have started going international and running into many complications. eToys was one company who learned this first hand.Toby Lenk founded eToys in June 1997 and had all hopes to become one of the most famous names on the Net. eToys Inc. is a web based retailer of toys, video games, software, videos, music and baby related products. He wanted to build a massive online toy warehouse that would give Toy `R' Us a run for its money. The key, Lenk thought, was focusing on customer service and convenience (Weintraub 2). The company's web site gives detailed product information, helpful and useful shopping services and innovative merchandising through easy-to-use web pages. The company had approximately 1.9 million customers at the year end. In July, 1999, Lenk started to branch out by buying online baby-supply retailer BabyCenter(Weinbtraub 2). In 2000, he launched the BabyCenter brand in the United Kingdom. eToys based its strategy on competitive pricing without spending significantly an advertising to build brand awareness. eToys' total spending on TV and print ads in 2000 was about $36 million, the same as it was in 1999. Which means their market area increased but their advertising didn't. They made numerous other mistakes which were very costly. eToys geared themselves to address adults as buyers. They failed to connect with children as consumers in Europe, something it also failed to do in the United States. Globally, the company also failed to exploit the full potential of the Internet in building customer relationships (Gomoloski 1). Perhaps the biggest mistake they made overseas is that it appeared to ignore the possibility of competition in the fragmented UK toy market. Toys `R' Us seemed to be the only competition. But eToys' operation was easy to copy and it...
