eBay has lost alot of market share to Amazon in current manufactured items. eBay does a poor job with high volume items where the customer wants a specific UPC, and it does a poor job with comparison shopping.
My wife is a powerseller on eBay, and I wrote and support the application that she uses to maintain her inventory, listings, postings, and sales.
eBay has made great strides in the user experience by using item specifics. When I am shopping, it is very important to quickly filter apart Dell 1950 server computers from memory sticks for Dell 1950 servers. I am seeing the Real Estate posting model, where separate servers have a specialized version which offers item specific filtering, being promoted to other areas.
That said, the main problem with promoting item specifics is the inertia of people like me. For the modest real income, it is hard to justify alot of reprogramming. When retailers go are online, they have to commit quite a bit of staff to classification/categorization and the inhouse software to support it. For the site to help customers find the purchasing options for a specific item, the site needs to know the relevant things about an item. Just look at initiatives to add color matching in eCommerce. The woman wants a red dress, but she has a finite set of bracelets and shoes with which to match. Cross selling is cool, but if you only sell complete accessorized outfits, you aren't going to get any business.
As far as fees go, they add up, but I don't support zero-upfront fees. Just look at the low quality of posting on Craigslist. There are many specialized sites, and more power too them if they can make it. There are always tie-ins that a homogenizing agent can't exploit. For example, Ravelry.com is a thriving site that pulled its market share out of eBay.
eBay was smart to buy Paypal who was smart to buy VeriSignâs Payment Services business. This gave them a working payment gateway model with recurring billing. This web retailers a way to process credit cards, receive Paypal balances, and manage recurring billing long before the competition. Authorize.Net, for example, has only recently got their recurring billing to where PCI non-compliant vendors can use it. In the meantime, dozens of other payment processors have jumped in the market. I don't see getting Paypal onto more website as a driver for future eBay revenue.
The total market for consumer good is pretty finite and perhaps permanently finite given the resources consumed. eCommerce sites took a big market share from brick-and-mortar retailers, but retailers have their own websites now. Retailers see the future opportunity in mobile apps. Perhaps it is just a fear of being behind the curve again, or perhaps impulse buying through cellphones will be a significant market share. I don't see eBay chasing that fragmented task.
