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Not everything needs to be auctioned

Started by mathewi · 5 months ago

Catherine Holahan has a piece in Business Week about eBay and the decline of the company’s traditional auction business — or rather, the increasing growth of its non-auction “Buy It Now” business, which she says currently generates almost half of t ... Continue reading »

7 comments

  • leigh

    5 months ago

    Ah this is interesting. My brother is a vintage clothing sales guy - he has lived and breathed ebay as a staple to his business. He has said that ebay's pricing policies have crushed him margins in the past couple years and he has been slowly changing his model to something more sustainable (and considering getting out all together). I wonder if the question isn't is ebay a fad, but more a question of whether ebay's monopolistic business practices are starting to cause its own demise.
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    I think eBay's actions in raising prices has definitely had something
    to do with it -- a friend of mine who has been making a living by
    selling records on eBay for years said pretty much the same thing.
    reply
  • Brendan Kirk

    5 months ago

    An additional problem with eBay is that it has become overwhelmed with knock-off products and counterfeits. As someone who buys and sells on eBay, it makes it difficult to ensure that what I'm buying will be what I'm expecting, and it reduces customer confidence, thus reducing the amount people are willing to pay for an eBay item, and reducing the number of bidders. There simply aren't enough checks and balances in place to keep the quality of the average listing up, and therefore people start to move away in favor of something more stable.
    reply
  • mathewi

    5 months ago

    That's a good point, Brendan. Thanks for the comment.
    reply
  • Stuart MacDonald

    5 months ago

    'thewie:

    I think you, um, nailed it with the "not everything is a nail" comment, and I for one am not surprised that they are seeing huge growth in the "But it now" service. In fact, we can see similar trends in other - big - categories. For instance, Priceline has become much more successful after their near-death experience that helped drive them to offer fixed-price travel services in addition to the auction style. When I was running marketing at Expedia, we wondered whether it would be successful, especially given that PCLN had invested so much in teaching their customers that they were an auction site, as well as the the hoo-haa about their "business system patent" or whatever. Personally, I liked their odds - they could draft on their huge reach and supplier relationships to offer "good enough" pricing without the hassle of the auction.

    The flipside is that when Expedia.com in the US tried to offer auction-style pricing for flights it flat-out did not work. Now there could be lots of reasons for that, but basically Expedia customers weren't interested. Which in part led to the acquisition of Hotwire. Different problem - different solution.

    - Stuart
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  • Maggy Young

    5 months ago

    If you want to buy something, the facility to buy it now helps a lot. You can decide & just buy it. Users can get bored & frustrated with messing around with auctions for ordinary things & leave it instead.
    Another reason why people have become disenchanted with Ebay is the common practice of sellers making false bids.
    reply
  • hello9999

    4 months ago

    Auction isn't dead...but honestly, it's so difficult to sort through all the items on ebay. You need alot of time to browse, but it is still fun to think you are the only one that has found that special item!
    reply

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