eBay SE Asia surveys Pro-Sellers

By Garry HJ | June 13th, 2009 | Category: eBay SG | No Comments »

eBay South East Asia have issued another survey for sellers – possibly in continuance of the drive to acquire more sellers onto the region’s sites that saw the ending of affiliate commissions for product sales, using the eBay Partner Network, last winter.

The survey is structured in a “what were you”, “where are you now”, “what do you need” set of sections that posed some questions obviously harvesting marketing fodder, some showing enquiry for why sellers are not as successful as eBay feel they should be, and some probing for opinion of what sellers need to grow and deliver the rate of fee revenue eBay probably desires.

Two of the early questions were interesting. My cynical side says that eBay have genuinely lost touch with why sellers use the sites, and are trying to rediscover that information -

What was your original intention when you registered on eBay? (Please choose one answer)
- Sell a few personal belongings
- Sell as a hobby or on a part-time basis
- Become a regular/professional/full-time seller
- Buy products online
- Other (please specify)

What motivates you to grow your sales on eBay? (Please choose one answer)
- To earn extra income to supplement my income from a regular job or other sources
- To grow additional sales channel and revenue for my existing business
- To become a successful entrepreneur and make my living on online business
- I use eBay to get rid of excess inventory I have from my other businesses
- Other (please specify)

Those questions could also be viewed as phishing to see if the reason for using eBay has suffered any major swings since the advent of J.D. as CEO. Nominally though, they are not geared at mega-sellers or mega-seller wannabes, they seem fairly targeted at the small and medium sellers, as well as the hobbyists, and that hints at a realisation that the policies of the last 18 months have been terminally damaging.

Being a South East Asia survey, there are a couple of basic research questions thrown into the mix, that hint at the possibility of the region renewing its drive to recruit eBay Education Specialists and other trainers for newer sellers -

How would you rate yourself in the following areas?

Computer skills (Please choose one answer that is most accurate)

English Language fluency skill (Please choose one answer that is most accurate)

Did you receive any help to register and start selling on eBay? If so, please rate how helpful they were: (1=Not helpful at all, 5= Extremely Helpful)

Each of those three has a fixed list of options and an “other” free-text option, but it was the fourth question, of that segment, that was most interesting -

What did you find most useful in helping you to grow your business on eBay to-date? (Choose all that applies)
- Phone consultation on how to register and list on eBay
- Books on how to sell on eBay written by experts
- Seminars/workshops
- eBay Top Seller Events
- eBay Selling Tools (Turbo Lister, Seller Manager, TeraPeak, MerchantRun, etc.)
- eBay Trading Assistant program
- eBay Help Pages
- eBay Export Center Websites
- Support by eBay Account Mangers
- Community/Discussion Board/Forum
- 3rd party blogs/websites about selling on eBay
- eBay customer service
- None of the above
- Other (please specify)

If you look carefully at the list, you will identify many areas impacted by last year’s global 10% employee cull that mainly hit the customer support and marketing departments – note in particular the mention of customer support, phone support, account managers, discussion boards & forums, and 3rd party blogs and instructional sites. The inclusion of these could indicate an evaluation of the support departments for further chopping, or they could be for assessing how far gone is eBay’s “community” mojo and whether the point of no return is approaching in the seller alienation stakes.

Note too that TeraPeak and MerchantRun are included as eBay selling tools – tantamount to an admission that they are no longer considered as independent vendors by San Jose.

In the “what does eBay need to do for you” section (my section title, not theirs) they supplied three questions which may or may not be intended for pre-structured campaign reactions -

What other services could eBay improve to help you grow your business on eBay? (Choose all that applies)
- Customer service
- Information about policy changes, updates, upcoming promotion
- Information about what products are selling well
- Services/programs that will improve international shipping cost and time
- Other (please specify)

Which operational area(s) do you find challenging when selling on eBay? (Choose all that applies)
- Sourcing/Buying merchandises
- Warehousing/Managing Inventory
- Shipping products/Export logistics
- Accounting
- Other (please specify)

Which aspects of the eBay selling experience need the most improvement? (Choose all that applies)
- Site navigation/General convenience of using eBay web site
- Tools for listing and managing listings
- Reporting capability to understand my sales and business on eBay
- Help with building seller credibility on eBay
- Communication with buyers
- Payment system on eBay
- Other (please specify)

There were other questions in the survey, but the ones I’ve quoted above will be those of most interest to BuildaSkill readers. They seem to give a hazy picture of what eBay might be thinking about for the Autumn round of site and policy changes.

One thought I had about the English skills question, was that perhaps eBay are considering a change to being monolingual globally. It would certainly permit massive job-cuts, which consultants and bean-counters are fond of – especially corporate raiders like those trained by Bain and Co.

That answer-option about “services/programs to improve international shipping times and costs” smacks to me of laying the ground for more “partnerships” like the DHL one that eBay tried to foist on sellers at the Chiangmai Top Sellers Conference in Thailand last December – just how do you justify a $40 courier delivery on a $0.99 item without being banned for P&P gouging? I’m still waiting for an answer to that one from eBay SEA staff.

However, when I look across the broader scope of the questions in that last segment, there seems to be several answer-options that are pre-positioning the opening of a “Fulfilment by eBay” type operation. Unfortunately, I fear that if such an operation was to be opened, it would be a disaster larger than eBay Express – simply because the only thing eBay retails is virtual advertising space. They do not operate in the field of selling (and therefore shipping) tangible products, and thus have no concept of what such an operation entails – domestically or globally.

What are your thoughts – do you see any hints of plans, or veiled agendas, in the survey questions? Post your comments below.

Gaz

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