eBay recently announced the ability to search by Product Identifiers such as an EAN or UPC. I’ve been chatting to Fedor over at Linnworks and he’s figured out some useful benefits of the new search method for sellers.
Sellers can now find competitor listings with relative accuracy and ease. In addition, this is a step forward towards having more coherent product catalogue on eBay. It will take a little time for buyers to catch on to the idea of finding a product on eBay, taking its EAN number and sticking it in search to bring all the same products, as well as choosing the cheapest or most trustworthy seller, but no doubt it will be a way to shop on eBay very soon.
Fedor told me that to take advantage of this new cool feature on eBay, TwoLegsBad, one of the developers of applications for Linnworks.net, has created an app which provides an interesting insight for sellers. At a click of a button, sellers can find all competitive listings, see who the sellers are, how many they are selling, compare prices and see their Best Match Rank, i.e. where on the search results their listing appears.
The app is free to use for up to 20 scans per day for Linnworks customers. Plus, as it can be used with Linnworks.net Express account it is effectively a freebie for everyone.
6 Responses
How can this be good for sellers an easy way to undercut your competitors and for your competitors to undercut you?
The result will be a price war and a race to reduce profit margin to nothing or drop the lines all together.
Most buyers don’t seem to car about the sellers account standing if looking at the state of the big eBay sellers accounts and buy on price only and having an easy way to find the best price will only drive sellers and eBay’s profits down
I can just put the barcode in to ebay search and get the same info, prices, best mmtch rank seller info etc
If i have entered my own bought EAN and a competitor has put in their bought EAN its not gonna really work is it and you will have the same item with quite a few different EANs.