News: EBay Opens Express Lane For Fixed-Price Deals

[Jimmy Cooper]

Article: EBay Opens Express Lane For Fixed-Price Deals
Source: Mediapost

"POTENTIALLY GIVING AMAZON A RUN for its money, eBay this week launched a fixed-price shopping Web site as an alternative to its established online auction service. At "eBay Express," the cost of listed items is not up for debate, so site visitors can get what they came for without the hassle of bidding. eBay debuted a "buy it now" feature several years ago, with a similar goal in mind."

Do you think this is a viable e-commerce solution? Any plans on expanding your sales to this new channel? What imapct do you see this making on your own store?

What are your thoughts?

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

We recommend using Ebay Auctions to all our clients as a way of both getting rid of excess inventory and getting additional exposure. While we never have compiled any numbers, generally speaking it seems that for every product sold on ebay, the are getting 2 or 3 sales direct through their stores and seeing a decided increase in visits while auctions are in use.

As for using their Fix-pricing service...I again, would think that our clients could benefit from the exposure, but its doubtful that they would see it as an actual sales channel...especially if its incurs a cost per order listing fee structure as our clients typically have a large number of products.

[Spencer]

Personally I see Express falling flat on its face. There are already quite a few complaints about it. Not really sure what the reasoning was behind this decision to create a separate site, other than to perhaps force more sellers to accept paypal. Ebay has also apparently made quite a large segment of their sellers extremely angry by removing the store listings from the general search. Sellers were exhaulting the huge increase in sales, only to have ebay reverse course and pull the rug out from under them. They gave the excuse about buyers having too many choices and getting confused. If anyone believes that one, I have some swamp land for sale. I also think the extreme silence by ebay with regards to Express, with absolutely no pr or advertising, speaks volumes as to the likelihood of its success.

[apanda]

They gave the excuse about buyers having too many choices and getting confused. If anyone believes that one, I have some swamp land for sale. I also think the extreme silence by ebay with regards to Express, with absolutely no pr or advertising, speaks volumes as to the likelihood of its success.

I believe that one, but I'm not interested in your swamp land. :) As a customer, the original appeal of ebay for me was finding used items at used prices. Then people discovered they could market their new items with ebay and those types of listings started overtaking the "real" auctions. That is the very reason that ebay has lost its appeal to me. I think it's a great idea to have the new items in a separate place. I would shop in both places depending on what I'm looking for, so I think it will allow that area of ebay to expand. There is a large banner on ebay's front page advertising it, so I'm not sure how that could be interpreted as silence. It's still in "preview" mode, so perhaps they'll promote it more heavily later...

I don't sell tangible goods, so it makes no difference to me as a seller. If I expand my business in the future, however, I would use the separate site. I have done some limited selling on ebay with used items I buy cheap on ebay and then resell. My customers expect to get a deal on ebay, so selling on the "classic ebay" site would be best for marketing (gaining new customers who then buy at your own store) than anything else. If I were to sell new items, I feel like I would be able to sell those products at a higher price on ebay express since customers go in with a different expectation.

[Pamela Hazelton]

Another problem, even with eBay's Buy It Now is the abuse by so many people who post higher priced products at an unbelievable price, only to rape you on shipping charges. For example, an MSRP item of $159 for $29.95, with shipping charges of $79.95 - they do that a lot, and for that reason, many people have totally given up on the fixed price auctions, and I see the same happening here.