Click here for the gloom-and-doom the media are piling upon eBay, who only grew sales by +/- 6% during the November / December timeframe, according to third parties who don't have full access to actual sales numbers.
It wasn't long ago that the pundits lauded eBay, celebrating the fact that they were shifting business to mobile - remember the gaudy platitudes about 40% of new customers coming in during Holiday 2013 via mobile (click here).
E-commerce experts are going to learn what catalog experts learned a decade ago ... channel shift does not equate to incremental sales. It just equates to different, but not better customer behavior.
This is where a comp segment analysis is so critical. Undoubtedly, the analytics folks at eBay have already done this, and either learned that new customer counts are down dramatically, existing customers are spending less, or both. When sales don't meet analyst expectations, there's almost always a comp segment issue with existing customers spending less. And that's a huge problem in e-commerce ... too few outbound marketing tactics to bring customers back (whereas catalog brands have huge advantages in these instances).
Twelve months ago, eBay was celebrated as a mobile pioneer.
Today ... layoffs and derision from outsiders.
Mobile is not the answer ... it's just a channel.
The key to business success is having something that customers want to purchase through you more than the competition. Why do so few in the marketing world focus on this?
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