Meg Whitman Sees eBay Evolving Away From Auction Roots To Fixed Price Ecommerce

[mandy]

eBay is fast moving away from its roots as an online auction site and becoming an electronic-commerce site, president and CEO Meg Whitman said today at a press conference here.

More than a third of sales on eBay sites are bought instantly at fixed prices rather than through the online auctions that established its reputation, she said. "Globally, 34 percent of the gross merchandise value of sales are settled through the 'Buy It Now' fixed price format," she told journalists.

The trend in sales is driven by the need to satisfy "convenience-orientated buyers" who do not want to wait for the end of an auction...Whitman said. She highlighted eBay's plans to launch a new service called eBay Express that would further encourage the trend by collecting all items for sale at fixed prices in one place.

full article: http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124648,00.asp

[iron_chick]

collecting all items for sale at fixed prices in one place.

Pssst . . . someone should tell Meg that buyers can already do that by searching for BIN only items. 

(Apparently not only does someone not sell on eBay, she doesn't buy there, either.)

[stardust]

I think it's rather obvious that their future plans include splitting the company virtually in two:  e-commerce and auction.  It might actually be better that way, as the auction side might be mostly collectible/older/higher-end stuff.  Prolly just wishful thinking.........

[xppman]

Pssst . . . someone should also tell Meg that if it's got ebay's logo
on it people are not going to buy their either because apparently more and more people perceive ebay as a place where you will get ripped off by scammers.

I heard a survey this morning on Fox that said only 23% of people that spend time online go to auction sites. That is down from an earlier statistic that someone brought forward about only 25% of e commerce shoppers shop at ebay.

Now why do you all think that ebay's traffic has slowed so much?
I think it is for several reason many of us have discussed time and time again.

The main reasons being slow glitch filled features and pages.
The non user friendly interface and the fact that the site is riddled with fakes, frauds and scammers on both sides of the deal.

So while the auction trend has faded out and a fixed
price format is the way to go.
The presents of the ebay and PayPal logos
will do little to improve buyer confidence in the Express site IMO.

Meg and team are grasping at straws as they keep sliding down
the scale of preferred places to shop, and for that I am very happy. 

[amy]

Pssst . . . someone should also tell Meg that if it's got ebay's logo
on it people are not going to buy their either because apparently more and more people perceive ebay as a place where you will get ripped off by scammers.

The ones who currently avoid eBay either think of A. fraud or B. they hear the name eBay and automatically think "auctions" even if they find an eBay fixed price listing in Google/Froogle which is why eBay Stores has never been able to attract a lot of web shoppers.