How eBay Managers Control Sellers with the "Power of Three"

[mandy]

From Randy Smythe's blog:

I want to discuss a different "Power of Three", one that eBay managers use to control sellers within the marketplace. This "Power of Three" consists of Price (fees) Policy (Trust & Safety) and Product (Visibility, restrictions etc.)

The Power of Price (Seller Fees)
Up until recently the preference of eBay managers was to use Price (fees) to control the marketplace because, of course, this is the easiest of the three to implement and it improves the bottom line. While many sellers believe that eBay raises fees solely to make more money; that is far from the case. eBay raises fees to control a marketplace that they think is unbalanced or headed in the wrong direction. The main motivation for the store fee increase of 2006 was not to make more money but to put pressure on store owners to reduce the number of items they listed; the side benefit was a boost to the bottom line because many sellers didn’t do what eBay wanted...

full article: http://rksmythe.blogspot.com/2007/05/eba...llers.html

[sneakymagenta]

The new Search eBay is testing (they call it finding) is ostensibly to improve the buyer experience but a side benefit for eBay is that they can manage visibility by improving ranking of higher velocity items and reducing ranking of slow movers and store items.

The Seller's Antidote to the Curse of the Power of Three: WEBSITE.

[BellisimaJ.]

The Seller's Antidote to the Curse of the Power of Three: WEBSITE.