RicRoe

What Will Become of eBay?

eBay's problems are self inflicted. The more eBay has done in the name of bringing business back to their site, the more they have alienated current users that were once infatuated with the market place as both buyers and sellers.

eBay started to seriously slide when John Donahoe as CEO came out in front of changes which gutted the core of the marketplace and referred to any member that spoke out against the changes as 'noise'. His arrogant 'noise' label insulted the very customers he was trying to keep.

Led by an executive team that has barely used the marketplace, eBay is now headed for obscurity because they do not 'get' it anymore.

eBay, unlike Amazon, does not own inventory, and relies on sellers to provide merchandise to the site. This said, it is hard to understand why eBay executives have instituted so many anti seller policies over the past year.

Further proof of how out of sync eBay leadership is, they fail to understand that sellers are buyers as well. Alienating sellers diminishes their interest in purchasing from the site or doing business in any way with a company that is viewed as seller unfriendly.

eBay's increased fees across the board and forcing sellers to accept PayPal to entitle them to an even larger slice of sellers profits, has not improved the company's fortunes, but has motivated sellers to take their business elsewhere.

eBay has become a ship without a rudder, adrift in a marketplace they have lost control of.

eBay execs fail to understand that word of mouth is essential to the success of their marketplace. With sellers having nothing positive to say, buyers are going elsewhere.

Until eBay is led by a team of executives with vision and experience in what makes eBay tick, eBay is destined to become the next Internet bubble to burst.

Buyers and sellers alike have lost trust and confidence in current leadership over the series of poorly implemented policies, feedback changes, imposition of the failed DSR system, constant technical glitches, search that is horrible, forced PayPal etc...

eBay is now beyond reversing failed policy and system changes. eBay now has to replace the entire core of enthusiastic members which they have managed to chase in addition to changing the failed policies and defective systems.

The simplest solution would be for eBay to simply get out of being in the marketplace business since it is obvious they have no clue as to what it takes to make and keep a marketplace relevant and successful.

John Donahoe, Lorrie Norrington and company will go down in history as the executives that managed to screw up a free lunch.

They are not the team that will lead eBay out of the disaster they created, they are the team that turned a marketplace with millions of happy members into a poor imitation of its competition with customers who have nothing good to say about the new experience.

This is unlikely to change until the book smart MBA's are removed, and replaced by a team of executives that know and understand what the eBay marketplace is.

The fix would be for Mr Omidyer to get back to work, and restore the core principles upon which eBay was founded. He had the right ideas and the company became a worldwide multi billion dollar success under those principles.

As eBay has moved further away from those founding principles, the foundation upon which eBay was built has crumbled, to the point that now the entire structure is in danger of collapse.