eBay Sellers Remain Loyal but Want Reduced Charges
The recent eBay annual conference brought over 10,000 eBay users together and many sellers expressed similar views on two themes – eBay’s charges and eBay’s dominance in the online auction marketplace.
Few sellers have plans to move their business away from the world’s largest online marketplace, but it seems that many would welcome a strong rival for eBay that could help to drive down the company’s present scale of charges.
eBay’s expansion has slowed in recent months, with Q105 listing growth amounting to around 30% over last year – only half of its’ growth 2 years ago. But this still represents a tremendous increase in trading volume in comparison with eBay’s online competitors and would be viewed as highly successful for any traditional business.
Many people expect Google to emerge as the main competitor to eBay when the company launches its “Google Wallet” e-payments service which, if combined with Froogle comparison shopping and classified ads, could be a formidable competitor to eBay auctions and shopping.
But most eBay UK shops and auction sellers that we’ve talked to this week seem to agree that rather than leave eBay, they would simply become members of whatever competitive services Google might decide to launch and therefore have the benefit of multiple channels to their marketplace as well as fee competition between eBay and Google.
Few sellers have plans to move their business away from the world’s largest online marketplace, but it seems that many would welcome a strong rival for eBay that could help to drive down the company’s present scale of charges.
eBay’s expansion has slowed in recent months, with Q105 listing growth amounting to around 30% over last year – only half of its’ growth 2 years ago. But this still represents a tremendous increase in trading volume in comparison with eBay’s online competitors and would be viewed as highly successful for any traditional business.
Many people expect Google to emerge as the main competitor to eBay when the company launches its “Google Wallet” e-payments service which, if combined with Froogle comparison shopping and classified ads, could be a formidable competitor to eBay auctions and shopping.
But most eBay UK shops and auction sellers that we’ve talked to this week seem to agree that rather than leave eBay, they would simply become members of whatever competitive services Google might decide to launch and therefore have the benefit of multiple channels to their marketplace as well as fee competition between eBay and Google.
