A couple of interesting eBay items this am and a new Weird Al Song!

Super busy this week but wanted to throw a couple of news items out there:

• Gene Munster @ PJC has an interesting piece out today on eBay (and Amazon - check amazon strategies for details on that one.).  Every quarter they do a survey of ecommerce shoppers (315 in this survey).
• • This quarter, 13% of buyers said they like to buy with the auction format vs. 19% a quarter ago and 23% in Sept. of 2008.
  • 69% of eBay shoppers were 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' with their experience vs. 71% last Q and 74% in Q408.  FYI Amazon is at 83% in the survey.
  • If eBay were to get a DSR for this, by my calcs they'd get a 3.45 and have to kick themselves off the site ;-) 
  • In all seriousness, these two data points are concerning on a number of levels, but primarily: 
  • •  I've long posited that the eBay brand is synonymous with auctions.  Thus auction fatigue = eBay fatigue.  Also while eBay is transitioning to fixed price as quickly as possible, 40% of eBay's bottom line is generated from the auction platform that is rapidly losing interest with the consumer. 
  • It's unusual that Gene's satisfaction levels are showing a decline, while eBay is out telling the world their NPS scores are on the rise and that sellers with DSRs > 4.8 are now a big chunk of the GMV.  
  • It's a small sample size, but what do you guys think - are auctions dead in the mind of consumers?  Are consumers increasingly dissatisfied with eBay transactions? 
• eBay UK has put out their quarterly Online Busines Index where they survey sellers and give an update on the eBay UK market.  I did a quick scan and this report makes seem pretty rosy in the ole' UK:
• • This report breaks down the EU (UK, DE, FR and IT) GMV for eBay which is the first time I've seen that in print.  They say that DE is €3.1b/yr, UK is €1.9b/yr, FR is €341m/yr and IT is €273m/yr.  Which pegs eBay's EU GMV At €5.7b.
  •  65% of UK retailers are expecting orders to be up this Christmas 
  • Price pressure is off, margins are up and the sales outlook is bright
  • Maybe they did this survey during that week in the UK where it's actually sunny ;-) 
  • Thanks to Mark@Dangleberry for the tip on this one. 
• Finally, I love the Doors and have been a Weird Al fan (gosh should I admit this in a public blog?) since I was literally 15.  Wel, Weird Al has a new song out called Craigslist that is a brilliant spoof of the Doors, but with a fun ecommerce twist.  I mention this here because I'm sure in the eBay world we all remember the excitement when Weird Al captured the eBay phenomena with his song 'eBay' which was a parody of a backstreet boys song.   I don't think the Weird Al eBay song is on youtube (that I can find), but here's a link to the new craigslist song.
• •  Weird Al's move to Craigslist signals that the site is officially mainstream now and I believe has replaced that 'seredendipitous random stuff' buying/selling in consumers heart.  I've long said that eBay faces a squeeze play from Craigslist at the bottom with the FSBO crowd and Amazon at the top.  This is another datapoint that supports that.  

SeekingAlpha disclosure - I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor.

Comments

[nadine]

I second all these comments -- auctions are a successful niche market, which ought to be flourishing in this down economy, and would be if eBay would simply allow them to flourish somewhere instead of being ashamed of them. They have spent the last five years shoving auctions into the closet and trying to become something other than their established, unchanging brand name: eBay is an auction house.

Actually, when you think of it, it's surprising eBay hasn't fared even worse in the last few years.

[Bill]

Don Ho unfortunately is clueless as to what eBay is. He changes the reinvention label every other month. First it was going to be like Walmart then they were going to be like Amazon. Next they were going to be the liquidators for all of the surplus merchandise that is out there. Now his latest is being like Costco.

Are the board of directors that stupid? Do they really have no clue? Who are the idiots that are investing in this company? Don't they even realize that an incompetent idiot is steering the ship? To sit there and do flip flops like that every other month is like Nixon in the White House after Watergate when many on his staff wanted him committed. Definite signs of Paranoia and Schizophrenia and absolute signals that he does not know what is going on or what to do.

We have been on eBay for over 10 years and have gone through the ups and the downs. Do Fixed Price and Auctions and 75% of our sales are in the auction format at prices that are equal to our fixed price on the same items or higher and sometimes way higher (3 to 4 times as much).

Everything in Commerce is about having a Brand and eBay's brand is auctions. The very best thing is to have two buyers who want the same item bidding against each other. The winner is happy because they know that they won the item and there was some one else right behind them. The seller is happy because they got a price that was what they wanted or higher.

The problem with the survey is that since they did Amazon and eBay buyers they were probably dealing with media buyers which auctions do not do well in unless you are selling old collectible items. We deal with older mature people and auctions are what they want.

Younger generation people want it now and many times they do not care what they pay, they just know they have to have it. When they have money they spend it but there are many out there who do not have jobs right now and if they do its part time. They will spend the money when they have it though and they do not want to wade through endless items of junk and have to deal with a search engine that comes up with what it thinks they might like. This is where eBay is failing. They will deal with Amazon because what they want comes up in the search. They will deal with Walmart because they are all laid out in the same manner and they know exactly where to go. They will not deal with Costco or other surplus outlets because they go in there and they have to wade through aisles and aisles of what they perceive as junk and it takes way to much time to get to what they are looking for.

eBay will never capture the younger generation. The eBay buyer is looking for that single hub cap for their old car, a porcelain cup that is missing from there set, a box car from some obscure railroad that is missing from their train set or a classic guitar they they once had when they were young.

This is what eBay was and this what eBay will always be unless Don Ho completely trashes the site and loads it up with junk, then eBay will be like AOL or even worse CompuServe and people will be talking about it as a relic from the good old days. All of the eBay buyers out there will be joining Weird Al over on Craiglist.

Bill

[davd]

where can we find vsl part two?

[Old School Ecommerce Guy]

Ebay without auctions is like Happy Days without the Fonz! Sure, the Cunningham family were entertaining but
without the Fonz, they were boring! And would have been cancelled years sooner....

Ebay doesn't seem to be on the road to capturing the Amazon/overall ecommerce Fixed Price market share that they hoped to. They are continuing on the "New Coke" road. One wishes that ebay had realized what they had before 2004 and started building on their brand identity by NOT trying to be all things to all people.

Let Costco be Costco, let Amazon be Amazon. I wish ebay had let themselves be ebay, but I'm afraid it's too
late for that now. 10 years from now (or less) ebay will be as relevant as AOL is now (remember when AOL was the king)?

[Steve]

Auctions will never be 'dead', they have been around long before eBay came into existence, and will be here if eBay ever closes up shop, which I doubt we'll see in our lifetimes (insert best Enron , Worldcom , GM joke here). With a down economy, you would expect eBay to be like Wal-Mart and reap the benefits of people cutting their discretionary spending by searching for deals and paying less on eBay , and also paying off their debts by selling their excessive past purchases. Ebay has missed this opportunity by seemingly trying to bury the auction format. Here is what they need to do, combine the auction format with Best Offer. The fixed price is at least available as an option to the buyer that hates auctions , the auction format is there for those that wish to bid and risk the item being snapped up by either BO or BIN, and the Best Offer would allow buyer & seller to meet in the middle. Why not simply use Best Offer w/ FP as it is now? Because the starting low bid auction gets more attention, and sellers would have higher conversions if all 3 options were available within 1 listing format.

[Phil Thompson]

Autions are more important than ever, people want deals, and auctions are the way to go. I can pay full price anytime, anywhere, and Buy It Now's are usually for full price items. It is only in the auction sector that people who actually want to move their items, can actually sell them, they might not get top dollar, but they actually will sell!
I see alot more auction items that have actually sold, while their full price BIN counterparts just sit there with no action. Ebay says auctions are dead, but most real sellers don't beleive it one iota!