Ebay's New CEO Wants To Move To Fixed Price Listings

[engine]

John Donahoe wasted little time as the new chief executive of Internet giant eBay before announcing big changes.
Less than an hour after being named to the top spot at eBay by the departing chief executive Meg Whitman, Mr. Donahoe said in a conference call with analysts that the company must move more quickly and aggressively to make eBay more appealing to buyers and sellers.

In an effort to reinvigorate growth of the core eBay site, Mr. Donahoe said he would shift eBay’s emphasis from auctions to fixed priced listing, which could make the experience of buying on eBay more like the one customers have come to expect from sites like Amazon.com.

Ebay's New CEO Wants To Move To Fixed Price Listings [nytimes.com]

[sun818]

> It is a shame that Ebay's solution for growth
> is to increase fees -- listing, paypal, etc.

eBay has stated they will reduce listing fees but increase FVF. Its more like Amazon Marketplace fee structure although eBay will still charge a listing fee. The 2007 Q4 Earnings call confirmed the change, but the details of the revised fee structure will be announced tomorrow.

[Lexur]

I think it's a question of credibility: suspicious (auto)biddings, strange bids cancelled, disappeared chinese sellers, unclear search results, poor customer guarantees and service and so on.

Online auctions has not solved the whole world market question (What's the price of this?) and once the "tree" stops growing, just starts decreasing. Now eBay will be simply another website where you can find "some things" with good prices (i.e.: cheap chinese electronics, comics...) and "some things" you can't find anywhere (i.e.: vintage collectibles, used wristwatches or exotic products around the world) taking the risks for yourself.

[trinorthlighting]

Ebay is way to greedy, 15-20% in fees when an item sells? Heck, I can create a one page website for one product, spend 5% of the selling price on Adwords and make a killing. Many sellers have realized this and ended up leaving Ebay.

[core2008]

For a seller, the appeal in auction type listings are two things - low listing fees for 99cent listings and generating extra traffic from people clicking on "see sellers other listings".

Unfortunately there is a high risk attached as few people look at items without any bids even at 99 cents. Then the product gets sniped under purchase price in the last 30 secs = a loss maker.

Because of this 99% of my listings are buy-now. However the high costs for non-selling items makes ebay really unattractive... hence me browsing this page in search for an alternative. eBay is not a viable option anymore...

[Essex_boy]

Their 'guarantees' are worthless. - I agree a real farce.

[ByronM]

Has ebay incorporated any fraud scrubbing yet? what really stinks in comparing eBay against amazon is while amazon's fees are high, they guarantee 0 fraud for charges on the merchant side - even for electronics.

On ebay/paypal for electronics/computers the fraud is probably 30-45% of TOTAL ORDERS.