Is eBay Becoming The Newest Big Box Electronics Site?

August 21, 2008 · Filed Under ECMTA, eBay · Comment 

Announced Changes Tell The Story

As I try to digest the changes to the eBay platform announced yesterday, I can’t help but notice that it truly appears to me that eBay wants to cash in on the Consumer Electronics wave. To do this eBay has inked “sweetheart deals” with such sites as Buy.com to give these huge consumer electronic sellers an unprecedented unfair advantage. These deals allow the huge sellers to list tens of thousands of items on the eBay site with no listing fees and reduced Final Value Fees (FVF).

In yesterdays announcment eBay states

” In extremely competitive e-commerce categories such as Consumer Electronics, Cameras and Computers, we’re decreasing final value fees. This means we’re giving you an even bigger incentive to list these types of items on eBay.”

 In addition, eBay is also offering

a special rate of only 5 cents through the end of the year for Buy It Now™ fixed price listings in the Media categories (Books, Video Games, Music and DVDs/Movies) using pre-filled item information.

These special incentives certainly are placing those high volume sellers in these categories at a significant advantage, just in time for the busiest selling season of the year. It is very apparent to me that with the emphasis eBay is placing on these very high demand and visibilty categories, that they (eBay) wants to become the largest online source for consumer electronics. While this is great if you sell in these categories, it is terrible news for those sellers that sell in other categories like clothing or shoes or any other category not benefiting from the reduced fees.

Auction Format Listings Remain The Same

As the announcement states, there will be no reduction in fees for those selling in the Auction Format. This tells me that eBay is still moving towards a Fixed Price site. Though Lorrie Norrington says in the announcement that “Auctions will always have a place on eBay”  I can not help but remember the immortal words she spoke at the PESA/ECMTA conference in New Orleans earlier this year. “You won’t recognize eBay in a year”.

The Same Old eBay-NOT

n my mind eBay already does not resemble what it was when I started selling on the site 11+ years ago. I realize that ecommerce has changed, technology has changed, and the online buyer has changed. To stay competitive, eBay had to make changes to stay competitive. My concern is what marketplace they want to be competitive in. Cetainly it appears that it is not the marketplace that they started out in, and that is OK if that is where they want to go.

In my opinion they should let their customers, who after all are the SELLERS decide what direction they should be heading to.

Silly me, I forgot, according to Pierre Omidyar we business owners don’t know what is in our own best interests.

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