@dbfolks166mt wrote:
"eminent"? Who was the person who stated that? The network is irrelevant. We just got back from a lengthy vacation (almost 8 weeks) and saw packed hotels, restaurants, and people buying items in stores. There have been a handful of economists that have been stating a recession is right around the corner for the past 20 plus years.
Most economists feel we are not in a recession at the moment but one thing almost all of them agree upon is inflation is a bit out of control at the moment and prices on about everything are rising faster than peoples wages decreasing the consumers buying power.
A lot of things have contributed to the post pandemic ecommerce slow down some of which are out of eBay's control. The Supreme Court decision, and the subsequent state laws, in Wayfair vs South Dakota, although this was pre-pandemic in some cases, resulted in sales tax being applied to almost all ecommerce transactions. The constant increase in shipping costs along with other expenses have required most sellers to adjust their pricing upward to incorporate the added costs to maintain their profit margin or ROI. The situation is not a bright one at the moment.
There is an absolute plethora of contributing factors to economics under best of circumstances more or less post Pandemic. Most factors, like 99% of them are out of eBay's control.
Coming off the Pandemic third party sales have been impacted significantly for a plethora of reasons. Inflation, sure and it's global not just in the USA and some areas of the globe hit MUCH harder than here. A war impacting energy commodities which rifle through everything not to mention other threats of conflict thereof and a nation divided atop it whilst people vote upon which party is worse instead of demanding they do better. During Covid literal plethora's of traditional retailers where the Internet was a sideline have now fully engaged it, Macy's, Kohl's, Walmart has snatched the #2 spot in eCommerce and you can pretty much guarantee they will eventually grab the #1 spot as they're ship to store model is BOOMING.
Third party sellers subject to shipping expense, big retailers, shipping for free or in the case of Amazon Prime which comes with free movies, music, eBooks and more. You might say eCommerce has grown up over the pandemic and sellers here need be price competitive in general or not get sales, pretty simple.
My lady blew $200 at Macy's online sale which by the way, every retailer who's anybody is running sales right now. According The Financial Times which I read an article perhaps a month or two back retailers are going to be very aggressive all the way through the holidays. So she spent $200, got well in excess of $800 MSRP of stuff and when she did a compare to Amazon and here, anyway it's cut she saved $200-$300.
I'm afraid for a literal plethora of products the equation now is third party sellers need be price competitive to venues across the internet, not just against eBay other sellers. Walmart in fact mandates it, they demand low price from all sellers and should their bots find a lower price elsewhere they can and do literally hide the sellers listing.
Blaming eBay for things completely out of eBay's control is simply silly and 99% of what's going on is out of eBays control. That all said I've generally all vertical market items that used to be mass market so it is what is good or bad economics and I appreciate the fact that eBay provides me a platform to get rid of it.
