eBay CEO John Donahoe would not reveal what the company was seeing 3 weeks after rolling out extensive changes to the U.S. site. In a conference call with analysts after releasing earnings on Wednesday, he talked about what the company saw after rolling out similar changes in Europe, and said it would take a few quarters for the changes in the U.S. to play out.
Mr. Donahoe said eBay would start assessing the impact in the summer to fall timeframe. He also said the changes were intended to drive consumers to sell in the auction format, and business sellers to sell in the Fixed-Price format.
eBay made major changes to its fee structure and eliminated the Store inventory format, in a move dubbed "Store in Core." Analysts have expressed concern over whether eBay's search engine can handle the influx of listings due to the changes.
Mr. Donahe said on Wednesday, "What we have proven in Europe is our search engine can take that. These are things that were proven out in Europe and will take time to sort of work their way into initially our listings and into demand but we feel good about the impact it will have on the U.S. business over the remainder of the year."
Mr. Donahoe also discussed some of the Marketplaces initiatives during the first quarter, including rolling out eBay Buyer Protection in the U.S. and U.K.; launching three new buying and selling mobile applications; and introducing Fashion.ebay.com, a new shopping destination for clothing, shoes and accessories. He said eBay was starting from a strong position as the number-one clothing site based on sales and traffic and expects to generate more than 5 billion in GMV from Clothing Shoes & Accessories.
Other highlights of the conference call include:
eBay plans to integrate BML more seamlessly into the eBay marketplace in the coming months.
eBay said it was already seeing promising results from the integration of BML in the PayPal wallet.
eBay is testing a new approval process for Bill Me Later that uses PayPal's extensive data, in addition to credit bureau data.
A transcript of the conference call is available on Seeking Alpha
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eBay CEO John Donahoe would not reveal what the company was seeing 3 weeks after rolling out extensive changes to the U.S. site. In a conference call with analysts after releasing earnings on Wednesday, he talked about what the company saw after rolling out similar changes in Europe, and said it would take a few quarters for the changes in the U.S. to play out.