Archive notice: This article was originally published on October 15, 2007. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Internet company eBay is struggling with a declining success curve. The reasons for this are the high fees and the increasing dominance of large sellers, who drive prices upward. A user-friendly redesign of the marketplace offering is now intended to help win back that part of the bidding community that has not actively participated in auctions for some time.
In Germany alone, eBay has a customer base of 20 million members. Twelve years after the launch of the Internet portal, however, enthusiasm for the virtual flea market seems to be slowly fading. Although the company is regarded as stable overall, analyses by Citigroup have shown that profitable development declined significantly, especially in the key markets of the USA and Germany. The results speak a clear language: Compared with the second quarter of the previous year, offerings on the German homepage have declined by 15 percent and on the US portal by six percent.
“In Austria, we do not have to struggle with this problem,” Uschi Mayer, press spokesperson for eBay Austria, explains to pressetext. “Compared with Germany, we can point to a very active bidding community with many private auctions,” says Mayer. In addition, with a current membership of 1.5 million customers, there is still sufficiently large growth potential.
Above all, the increase in fees carried out at the beginning of the year is seen as the reason why many eBay customers no longer participate in the online auctions. The US group retains money not only for listing goods but also for the sale. This mainly affects hobby sellers, for whom an auction as a result is in most cases no longer worthwhile at all. In addition, so-called “Powersellers” – experienced large sellers, some registered as GmbHs – now largely dominate the business. They drive prices upward and make entering an auction unattractive for potential bidders.
