According to their Annual Report, the eBay marketplace strategy is summed up in just 12 words and three aims – “Delivering the best choice, the most relevance and the most powerful selling platform”.
eBay marketplace Strategy
“Our strategy is to drive the best choice, the most relevance and the most powerful selling platform for our buyers and sellers. We focus on connecting buyers and sellers through simplified experiences to make it easier for users to list, buy and sell items.On our Marketplace platform, our strategy is to drive the best choice by attracting and retaining sellers and brands that bring differentiated inventory to eBay and provide our consumers with great selection and value. This includes new, everyday items as well as rare and unique goods, many of which are available with free shipping and delivery in three business days or less.”
– eBay Annual Report
eBay marketplace strategy – Choice
There is no doubt that eBay have the widest choice of all western marketplaces. Amazon doesn’t come close to the breadth of goods available on eBay, notably eBay win in antiques, collectibles and many other categories where products aren’t new.
eBay marketplace strategy – Relevance
eBay’s relevance is largely driven through Best Match which aims to surface the most relevant items for sale. Here at Tamebay we think that eBay’s search results relevance has been somewhat diluted by giving the top position in search results to eBay Promoted Listings – this means that far from having the most relevant product on eBay, you can be top of search because you’re willing to pay more through eBay promoted listings than anyone else.
eBay marketplace strategy – Selling Platform
On their selling platform, eBay expanded on the work they are doing to transform the marketplace for buyers and naturally their structured data efforts also impact on the selling platform. They also call out new tools such as the Seller Hub.
“We are in the midst of a multi-year transformation of our platform to deliver a shopping experience that is designed to attract new buyers and that is highly personalized, modern and engaging for users. To help deliver the most relevance to buyers, we are innovating shopping experiences tailored to each user’s interests, passions and shopping history. Leveraging a foundation of structured data — our initiative to better understand, organize and leverage inventory on eBay — we are progressing toward a more personalized, discovery-based user experience and making it easier for customers to find inventory both on and off eBay. We focus on offering a powerful selling platform for our business and consumer sellers by continuing to expand adoption of our Seller Hub product, a tool that helps sellers run their eBay business, while adding new capabilities to enable sellers to build their businesses and drive profitable sales on eBay.”
– eBay Annual Report
