In my continuing attempt to tap into the habits and attitudes of the online selling community, I put out a survey last week on the following sites' forums.
- Power Sellers Unite
- Overstock Auctions
- eCrater
- iOffer
- BluJay
- Yahoo Group I subscribe to
The survey was anonymous and 10 questions long. 62 responses were collected within ~24 hours.
Online Auction Site Satisfaction
As I have discussed here, there has been a great deal of consternation in the eBay community since the departure of CEO Meg Whitman. New policies related to release of funds through PayPal, and restrictions on the types of feedback sellers may give to buyers are two of the reasons. At a high level, there seems to be a great deal of dissatisfaction among the online auction choices as seen here (readers should filter a certain level of angst among those who participate in online forums to begin with):
The good news for eBay and the other online auction sites is that the Satisfaction levels are significantly higher among sellers with >25 items. Among this group, about 49% classify themselves as Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied vs. 55% among the overall population.
In both groups, 64-65% indicate there is a 51-100% chance they will try new auction sites.
Among Power Sellers, those with 100 or more products currently listed online, the picture gets more interesting. 55% of them indicate they are Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied with eBay, and fully 42% of them indicate there is at least a 76% chance they will try new auction sites. Among all three groups, Online Auction has the most consistent Satisfaction levels.
Payment Options
Because Mpayy offers the best merchant model for online sellers, and is very new to the market, this section of the survey holds particular interest to us. None of the respondents indicated they were currently using Mpayy (subject to change), although two did indicate they were Very Dissatisfied with us, but that is likely me pestering this community for information and attention as I evangelize the virtues of our secure money transfer service.
Not surprisingly, PayPal has an incredibly tight grip on this market, with 88% of respondents using PayPal and 36% using Google Checkout. PayPal helped midwife the online selling market and eBay, and Google has been loss leading to get a toehold in the payment processing business. Google Checkout has paid some shopping cart providers to include their service, and so these two providers are the most available and thus most highly utilized right now.
100% of the Google Checkout users rate themselves as Satisfied or Very Satisfied, which is a nod to the continuing user friendliness of the Northern California behemoth known as Google. 30-40% of the PayPal users across the three groups rate themselves as Dissatisfied or Very Dissatisfied.
The survey indicates that ~40% of online sellers are at least 51% likely to try new payment options, with Power Sellers showing the highest willingness to switch. The following table shows by group the percent in each group of sellers to try new payment options.
| # Items | 0-25% | 26-50% | 51-75% | 76-100% |
| All Respondents | 37% | 16% | 16% | 30% |
| More than 25 items listed | 44% | 16% | 13% | 28% |
| Power Sellers | 44% | 12% | 12% | 32% |
56% of Power Sellers Participate in eBay Boycott
One interesting tidbit revealed in this survey was that while 45% of the overall eBay community participated in the boycott, 56% of the Power Sellers (>100 items listed online) who responded to the survey participated in the eBay boycott. There was no further qualification of this participation, but it's an interesting number.
Lessons Learned
It seems rather clear that this is a movable market. Online auctions have virtually zero switching costs, especially as new software platforms arise that allow online sellers to manage their inventory in one central location and publish to multiple selling forums. Mpayy can gain market share here by demonstrating its value and integrating to the sites and solutions being used by this market. Given the ease of implementation and the value proposition to buyers and sellers alike, it is only a matter of time.
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