Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney issued a research note on Thursday summarizing his key takeaways from this week's conference of the Internet Merchants Association (IMA), an association of high-volume eBay PowerSellers.
According to Mahaney, eBay will be rolling out new search-results functionality in March that will allow shoppers to sort results by total cost. Currently shipping is listed separately in search results so that sorting by price excludes shipping and handling costs.
Mahaney also said that eBay indicated that hiding user IDs for bidders on items over $200 (part of the Safeguarding Member IDs - SMI - initiative) reduced fraud by 80-90% on fraudulent Second Chance Offers. "Given the significant improvement, eBay may lower the $ threshold further," Mahaney wrote. eBay's SMI policy is controversial, with some claiming it makes spotting shill bidders more difficult.
Mahaney said ChannelAdvisor CEO ScotWingo credited his clients' improved eBay metrics to eBay's anti-counterfeiting and SMI initiatives. Mahaney also wrote of the conference, "The overall tone amongst sellers was more positive vs. last fall's PeSA Summit, with many sellers crediting eBay with making progress on some key initiatives like improving trust & safety."
However, Mahany wrote, "The hedge here is that improvement for large sellers may potentially be at the expense of smaller sellers (i.e., share shift), although we are encouraged by the positive comments."
According to Mahaney, IMA members were upbeat about working with Google, and Amazon remains an attractive channel due to relatively higher ASPs (average selling prices) and fewer customer service demands versus eBay.
