There's a whole plethora of things impacting online sales here and elsewhere. I've a friend down the trail who uses Amazon and he's literally got a shop packed with everything conceivable not to mention his backroom. If I took photo's you'd go "OH MY GOSH!" to be sure. His sales are off about 40% at Amazon, he won't sell here albeit I keep telling him to and atop that with FBA his commissions are near 40%. Of course he's pays dirt for most everything he gets in either via cash or trade. For example few weekends back I was there and a fella brought in two gigantic boxes of Franklin Mint Cars/Collectibles all like mint in their original boxes. Just buckets of em'. Paid him $10 each and $15 store credit each so what's the guy do? Goes pawing through vinyl record albums and get's a receiver, turntable and a pair of old Series II Bose 301 Speakers without even the original woofers in em. Made out like a bandit on it.
Everyone need remember most of the folks in the nation are cash strapped with one to three months of money. News media and the state of land continually sends fear through the public. There is nothing NORMALIZED as of yet coming off the Pandemic nor are we necessarily over the Pandemic.
I'd have to write a small book about impactors on consumer spending at the moment but even at that there is more at play. During the Pandemic many retailers embraced sales online vs a sideline and the deals along with many doing global shipping are significant.
My lady was just the other day looking online buy gifts for easter. Macy's online beat every single price she'd found on what she wanted both here and at Amazon, one order, done and no worries about anything going awry. That's just Macy's... A friend of mine who sells computer, gaming, electronics stuff told me already two months back he dropped all his eBay prices by near 35% and his sales hopped upwards. Again he pays dirt for the stuff, he's a retail store, it comes to him.
I said this in another post, we've pawn shops springing up like weeds and I've yet to see anyone in years on end that doesn't sell the lions share what comes in online.
People want think Amazon, Etsy, Mercari the competition and that's untrue, at this point in time every place selling anything is competition. Throw into the mix economics, global instability, scarifying news media and more... In the midst of all of it eBay makes changes perhaps unwise ones and perhaps some wise ones. Again, the big winner online has been Walmart as by policy they dictate vendors have low price, they are supporting brick & mortar, they have they're own freighting and are opening up to much more the claim this year.
Said this before, via a Price Search I found a 55" JVC QLED TV with all the bells whistles via Walmart. Shipped to my door for $248 dollars, same TV in retail $700 last year. I figured it never arrive but it did, sealed/new. Roku remote was DOA. Call Walmart, they give me a number to call. I call the number its the place that actually sent it to me. Yea, I get a new remote but in talking to the fella I find out Walmart is embracing top notch liquidator/warehousing op's. My new TV was due be delisted hence the deal. Look at it, Walmarts online eCommerce Revenues in 2022 were 47.8 Billion dollars this year projection is 54 billion dollars and that's not counting Sams Club or Walmart International. They've taken the #2 spot behind Amazon and I've no doubt will take #1 as that's what they do and they destroy anything and everything in their path just as they do in retail short of Target who survives via people like myself who loath Walmart.
But when I can get a TV like that for $250 to my door, a $600 cooking grill delisted for $159 thereabouts and I've got a gaming laptop that was $1299 for $479 all via one price search site, well, hard to beat that.
eBay should be embracing price search engines but that's rather hard to do when sellers dont enter proper data, UPC's etc. For whatever reason folks tend think people search for prices at Google. No. Smart shoppers use price search engines.
Regards,
