eBay

Posts relating to buying and selling on eBay, working at eBay, or other eBay related issues.

eBay Express TV Campaign Launches

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

This is my personal blog, so as a rule, I try to avoid posting too much about anything resembling work. However, it’s no secret that I currently work as a Director of Product Management at eBay.

One of the most significant achievements of my career has been the work over the past 18 months bringing to life a whole new e-commerce site and business for eBay – eBay Express. eBay Express is a new site from eBay which allows buyers to quickly and easily shop the incredibly large selection of brand new, fixed-price items for sale on eBay, exclusively from experienced merchants.

eBay Express

I may post at a later time about some of the great things that I learned from the process of launching site of the technical and business scale of eBay Express, but for now I just want to highlight a milestone for the site – our first TV advertising campaign.

eBay is releasing 22 commercials – all based on the same theme, but all unique. They are all available for viewing on a special website:

http://www.whatisit.com/

You will definitely see the spots on network television in the upcoming weeks. Look for it on popular season premieres and sports broadcasts.

It’s a funny feeling to see something that began as just a few people in a room with a whiteboard and laptops turn into something on national television. Amazing, really. I feel truly privileged to be a part of it, and to help bring this new site to the eBay Community and to the world of e-commerce.

So, check it out, and tell a friend. Buy something on eBay Express. Let me know what you think.

Blogs I Read: Jason Steinhorn, The Steinhorn Stare

/ Adam Nash

One of the most fun blogs that I read is one that belongs to my friend and colleague, Jason Steinhorn.  It’s called, “The Steinhorn Stare”, I’m assuming after his now infamous poker face, captured on television as part of the World Series of Poker.

Here is a great example of why I love reading Jason’s blog:

2006 Legends of Poker

Now, I will be the first to admit, I am clearly a voyeur of the recent poker boom that has hit Las Vegas, the internet, and about half of the engineers and techies I know.  I really appreciate the way that Jason’s posts capture the subtlety and complexity of the game.  Poker is a fascinating blend of psychology and math, with a distinct advantage to those who know how to manipulate the perception of their play vs. just knowing the odds.

As a result, Poker lands squarely into my “sweet spot” of fascination – an arena where the ultimately rationale (statistics) intersects with the ultimately irrational (human emotion & perception).

So while I may never be a great poker player, I like living vicariously through Jason and other friends who participate in these events with $10K buy-ins, and who actually win.

True story: Last year, Jason & I were both managers in the same division of eBay Product Management.  At our regular Monday managers’ meeting, Jason was nowhere to be found.  He was still in Vegas, having won 2nd in the World Series of Poker, and close to a quarter of a million dollars.

That news would be cool enough, but what I liked is that Jason had faxed in the winning check – like a “doctor’s note” to be excused from class that day.

This is Jason’s last week at eBay, and he’ll be sorely missed.  But he’s off to a new adventure at another cool company, and I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to learn from him these past two years.

Now, if he would just post more regularly to his blog…

Google, Apple & EBM (Everyone But Microsoft)

/ Adam Nash / 1 Comment

A lot of press today about Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google and alumnus of Sun & Novell, joining the Board of Directors of Apple Computer.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2003

Everyone is a buzz with implications of what happens if these hot hot hot companies join forces against Microsoft. As you can tell from my sarcasm, as usual, I think the press is sensationalizing a fairly mundane corporate event here, just because putting Google & Apple in the title of articles gets readers these days.

Don Dodge potentially gives this idea more credit than it deserves, but provides a really thorough explanation on why we shouldn’t count our merger chickens before they have hatched.

Of course, if you look closely at any two big internet players these days, you can find synergies:

  • Apple.com has a lot of traffic
  • The Safari browser has 3% marketshare and growing
  • iTunes is the winner in the online distribution of music
  • Google is the winner in market share for natural search
  • Google paid search economics are currently the best available
  • Google Video is a player in the nascent digital video market

However, this announcement has a lot more to do with the fact that Steve & Eric run in the same circles, have a lot of common friends and beliefs, and of course, Google & Apple are both great consumer internet brands. It looks good for Eric & Google to be on the board of Apple, and it looks good for Apple to have Google & Eric on board. Simple.

What is interesting to me, however, is how much better Google is doing handling the mantle of “Leader of the EBM Club” (EBM = Everyone But Microsoft). This has been a dangerous baton to hold, and many formerly strong companies have been destroyed this way. But Google has learned a thing or two about how to proceed here, and it is interesting to watch the next round of the “let’s try to topple Microsoft” game.

It’s different this time, of course. Google & Yahoo both are giving Microsoft fits, so the three-way dynamic is immediately more interesting. Success by new entrants (MySpace, Facebook, YouTube) keep changing the game. The resurrection of Apple continues to astound veterans. And as eBay has shown recently, the other internet powers will weigh in and influence this game. This is a very exciting time to be in the Internet space.

I remember in the late 1990s when Netscape had this mantle, and completely failed to appreciate the responsibility. They largely shunned Apple. Their arrogance got in the way of a deal with AOL (ironic, given the later merger).

There was a time when Netscape had all the market share you could want, but Microsoft clawed their way into a significant minority (25-30%). Then with one deal (the infamous AOL deal to use Internet Explorer), they flipped to majority marketshare and never looked back.

I bring up this story because shunning Apple was not about marketshare, although at the time Macs were still disproportionately strong in Internet market share because they come with networking out of the box, and because Macs were strong in the university & high income demographics (early adopters of the web).

Apple is the Grandpa of Microsoft battles of yesteryear. It is still a thought leader on imagining a world where you DON’T need a DOS/Windows PC. Their audience, though small, are thought leaders – disproportionately represented by the creatives, the journalists, and the executive ranks. They are also cooler than most.

By linking their name with Apple, Google in some ways gains a small, but powerful ally. Like a chapter out of The Lord of the Rings, it makes people think maybe this new champion will succeed against Microsoft where others have failed. The prophecy fulfilled.

The baton is passed.

I’ll post another time about why I think the question of Google vs. Microsoft is likely the wrong one. The Google ethos isn’t about killing Microsoft. In the end, this is much more about future growth opportunities for Microsoft than any type of defeat. But in our market-based economy, growth is power, so it’s worth talking about… another day.

Behavioral Finance, Anchoring & eBay Auction Starting Prices

/ Adam Nash / 7 Comments

There is a great article today from Alex Goldfayn in McClatchy Tribune papers, like the Sun Herald in Mississippi:

The Sun Herald | 08/27/2006 | Starting price is key in eBay auctions

It quotes some recent research from the Kellog School of Management, including Associate Professor Adam Galinsky on the behavior of buyers in auctions.

Now, as someone who has been selling on eBay for over 8 years, and working for the company since early 2003, the conclusions of this study are fairly obvious. It turns out – yes, it’s true – that auctions that start with lower starting prices result in higher final sale prices.

Why is this interesting? Well, it turns out one of the staples of modern negotiation theory and behavior finance is the concept of anchoring. Anchoring, loosely defined, is the irrational human process where people will gravitate towards a number – any number – and use it as a sub-conscious basis for what they consider a fair price.

Example: it has been shown time & time again that the higher the original price quoted by a salesperson, the higher the final price that the buyer will end up paying for the exact same item.

Even more disturbing, experiments have shown that even quoting random numbers, like the last four digits of your social security number, can actually affect the answer the people give to seemingly unrelated questions, like estimating the number of doctors in New York.

What’s interesting about this research in relation to eBay is that you would expect, based on anchoring, that the higher the auction start price, the higher the final price of bidders.

However, what the Kellog research shows is that there are other, more important emotional factors in auctions. The low price lowers the “barrier to entry” for people, and then once they are involved, they continue to bid based on the “sunk cost” of their time spent already on the auction.

I personally believe a third factor comes into play with auctions, which is competitiveness based on a false sense of ownership. People find an item they like, and that message, “You are now the high bidder” is powerful. Getting the message that you have been “Outbid” is inflamatory – it signals a primal part of your brain that triggers fear and anger that someone has “stolen” your item away from you.

I think that there has been so little academic research on the largest and more varied global marketplace (eBay), so I love to see these papers that trickle out that begin to help scratch the surface of understanding how human beings interact with each other in marketplaces other than the stock and commodity markets.

Please, if you see other research like this, send me links or documents. I find this type of analysis incredibly interesting.