Ebay Browsing For Me?? Or Promoting "Favored" Sellers

I have a lot of non-stamp items in my watch list on ebay. Mostly bulk produced items like kitchen gadgets and such. I know that many of these listings are from Amazon re-sellers, and there are dozens (and some time hundreds) of the same item, including the same descriptions, listed at various prices (depending on the re-sellers greed level, I suppose).

Recently, I have been getting emails from ebay, with the title "We found a cheaper option:" with a link to another auction of the identical item I have in my watch list. How, and why, is ebay monitoring my watch list, and offering lower priced items? To begin with, wouldn't ebay profit more if I bought the higher priced item from my list, rather than showing me a lower priced item that would net them less? Secondly, isn't this detrimental to the seller of the item from my watch list? I mean, it's bad enough for a seller to lose sales to a diligent buyer who shops for a better price, but to have the auctioneer actually undermine your sales by pointing out lower priced items to the buyers?

Or, is the a new approach for ebay to reward their "preferred" sellers by actually promoting their products for them?

Don't understand the idea behind these e-mails, but it really does leave a bad taste in my mouth about the whole situation.

Yes ebay have banner from Amazon et other on the pages . I don't get it they shoot in their foot when a potential buyer is redirected at Amazon.

ebay wants to empty your wallet at ebay; getting you to the site, and buying, is good for the entire selling community, longterm.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

kuhli ... ebay is simply trying to induce you to close a transaction and to increase sales velocity. They are concerned about volume or transactions more than the per-transaction price.

Sales on ebay are down a great deal in general and I think that cjpalermo1964 makes a point....any sale is better than none in ebay world. As a Seller, I don't want to see buyers redirected to lower priced items...and I doubt many other Sellers listings are offered for less than my asking...but bottom line...there aren't many sales in general. Recently I began to follow other Sellers listings and clearly the auctions ended with no sales. I seem to also have more buyers contacting me directly with want lists.

Lately, ebay promotions have begun to include relisting for free and I guess that backs up my findings.

ebay is desperate to have sales period....so it doesn't surprise me they are redirecting buyers....but to redirect to Amazon is just plain odd.

This is what is hard to understand, link that bring you outside of ebay in your personal page, this can only make loose money to sellers, would you like to see a link to Delcampe on your buyer's pages ?

From a buyer's perspective, ebay has jumped the shark. It use to be fun to search for all the obscure stuff from small time sellers.... maps, post cards, antiques, etc. You can't find that stuff anymore.... just bulk sellers pushing mega junk. I still use it for buying stamps, but only use a couple of sellers I have worked with in the past. The Peter Principle is in play with ebay.

10 to 15 years ago you can buy Minkus album with mainly all the spaces fill with stamps over 1940-50 for around $ 200 and only stamps over $ 1 was missing now they sell albums who as been pick so many time that even series of cheap stamps are not complete, I end with so much duplicates that no one want to buy. The worst part is I'm 55, when I'm gone retire in 10 years, no one will be collecting stamps any more, so the duplicates that will have been fun to sell at retirement will be good to start fire. 10, 15 , 20 years ago I was planing to enjoy my stamps hobby at retirement, I'm not that sure any more.

Q/ What makes you think that it is ebay that is selecting the "Sponsored Links"?

They don't choose but

Many time those kind of banner script come from company like googleadservices look on the one of ebay which one allow those script





But at least they don't look to spy on our browsing , not like Facebook, look at the banner on my Facebook

ebay has lost its way and like many businesses with a history of rapid growth, they have hit a wall on how to continue to grow the business. ebay and Amazon are 2 very different beasts and they have different target audiences. Amazon actually has 2 completely different marketplaces and they've done a MUCH better job of configuring things to fit their niche(s).

The biggest issue for ebay is the large preponderance of buy-it-now lots, something which they originally discouraged (with prejudice!). But in order to make medium and large corporate sellers happy, they've allowed "buy-it-now" to be the rotten apple. In the collectibles space, those larger sellers want to sell at retail, something far outside the core competencies of ebay but recently mastered by Amazon, at least for its Prime marketplace.

If it were my company I'd make so many changes. You would not be allowed to sell buy-it-now without a best offer option. And you would pay for every BIN listing. If your BIN OBO offer did not sell after perhaps 3 10-day cycles, you cannot list that item again without lowering the asking price. Of course sellers would just re-list the lots with a different lot number, so some counter-measures would have to be put in place.

Auction listings would be free. Here again, there would be a limit on the number of cycles you could run an auction, to remove items that are worth $100 but have starting bids of $99. After you use up those cycles, you pay to list an auction for the same item. I'd restore a meaningful 2-way feedback system and all negatives would be subject to removal if they are retaliatory.

Bidding would be open- some level of exposure of the bidders to scrutiny but without loss of their privacy would be a must-have. Private auctions would not be allowed. Anyway, just some thoughts. I'm certain ebay will never ask for or accept any of my advice. :-)

ebay wanting to force some consolidation by nudging smaller sellers out?

Doing business with fewer higher volume sellers is a wal mart model to profitability and even lower prices.

shermae: ebay has changed, but that does not necessarily mean that they have "lost their way".

The breathtaking growth in the number of listings - including the arrival of so many large dealers - has forced sellers to abandon the auction format.

The predominance of BIN listings means that, for collectibles, ebay is now a publisher of price lists or, if you prefer, of classified ads.

That is not a terrible business model, even if it is a lot less fun for you & me.

Yes, only a very small percentage of the goods move each month, but the store fees provide a recurring source of revenue, too.

You are correct that more/higher listing fees would reduce the clutter - and drive traffic back to the auction format - but I am less certain that ebay would want to do that.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who has not received an offer of 1000 or 1500 free listings in months)

Very good points Ikey. The drive back to auction format would drive sales velocity and remove A LOT of super-long-tail offerings. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Perhaps Linn's should approach ebay about a strategic alliance where all BIN items go onto ZOS and all auction items go onto ebay. To me, ZOS and ebay in it's current state of evolution are very, very similar (except for traffic).

Yes they do, almost all of the ad services do. Google/Doubleclick invented that stuff. They all use beacons to see where you've been and try to present you with ads displaying what your surfing suggests you would want. They get no personal identification, just where you've been. I couldn't possibly care less.

Funny thing is, with me at least, they present me with ads for things I already bought.

Bobby is, or course, right. 'Clickable' demographics has been around for quite a while. It is easy to understand by simply using a fresh operating system install (like with a VM). Some of this technology is amazing albeit it a bit scary. For example, if you visit a few mountain biking web sites, within seconds going to Amazon, ebay or a search engine site will instantly begin showing you other 'outdoor' type recommendations. I once went to a single dictionary web site on a virgin OS install as a test; that one visit put over 40 cookies on the computer.

They use these demographics to target the ads and recommendations. No point in showing you stuff for dentures if you have all your own teeth. As Bobby mentions, these cookies don't have any personal info other than site history and making assumptions of the 'type' person you are. You can sometimes make sense of how they work but looking at the cookies on you computer. In some ways I like the technology, at least I am not seeing feminine hygiene product ads.
Don