Are eBay Buyers from Another Planet?

Shopping patterns of eBay buyers and traditional e-commerce.

[netguy]

While I personally haven't been much of a fan of eBay, it appears there are two distinct groups of people buying on the Internet: eBay buyers, and all the rest.

I have a few clients that have started with an eBay store, then as sales build, call on me to build a conventional e-commerce site for them.

Even though both stores are well positioned for various products within the search engines, eBay buyers seem to seldom click on traditional e-commerce websites, and non-eBay buyers seldom click on eBay.

For example, I have seen (several times a week), where certain products don't sell on one - are moved to the other - then sell out overnight. In a recent case, the 'buy now' price was $100 higher than the e-commerce site, and 3 products sold immediately - even though they could have easily found it for less outside eBay.

It would appear that eBay has successfully created a separate culture of buyers that, depending on your target, may be a good parallel market to go after - particularly when there are tens of millions of prospective buyers apparently sitting outside the mainstream.

I look forward to hearing from others involved with both sides of this e-commerce fence.

Steve

[Essex_boy]

Yeah I agree with this, Ive found this worked with Paypal as well.

In that PP buyers are almost always big ebay buyers and ebayers rarely pay via a non pp method.

I have found that items like yours sell well on ebay for over 70% more than on my site, not always but on most occassions.

Ebayers also do not as a rule complain about delivery times or postage costs where as ecomm buyers do.

Funny ole world init?

[chodges84]

I've often pondered on this.

I use both e-bay and websites when I'm buying, but I think when you own an e-commerce site yourself, you're not classified as a 'Normal Buyer'. You know that some things go well on ebay, others on normal sites, so unlike the 2 groups you mention, we are more likely to find what we want at the best price.

[Sunshyn]

I think there is a smaller subset of those of us who use both, and such people are probably only ecommerce sites. To those who have made common use of the internet before Ebay existed or became popular tend to think of it as just another tool to use.

Generally, I get the feeling that many ebayers tend to think of the entire internet as consisting of Ebay, at least insofar as shopping goes. If I mention something along the lines of "I developed and run an ecommerce website for my business", the reply from those who turn out to be ebayers is usually something like "Someone I know/I sell on Ebay too!". They just don't understand that there could be a difference.
Selling on the internet == Selling on Ebay.

Oddly enough, IME its the ebayers who seem to be the only ones complaining about, or even trying to haggle down, things like postage costs. I've always just attributed it to the flea market mentality.

[MarkWolk]

I buy items for my personal use both on ebay and other e-commerce sites.

I think ebay is great to find rare items. I.e. I own several classic cars, and I have been able to buy NOS (New Old Stock) parts on ebay, whereas they were unavailable through other channels (official and specialist dealers). A friend of mine managed to buy on ebay brand new parts... made in the 1930ies for his 1929 Chrysler.

On the other hand, other e-commerce sites are great for buying less rare items. I.e. I recently ordered a set of hand-made frying pans. I knew that I wanted frying pans from a certain manufacturer in France; I typed their name on Google, and that led me to an e-commerce site selling a.o. that manufacturer's frying pans.

So both ebay and other e-commerce sites fill a niche each, without one or the other being useless.