Do you get sales even though you're not the cheapest ?

[ECS]

Question for any experienced Amazon & Ebayers out there ?

.... do you make any sales of items that others have advertised cheaper and if so any tips ?

Following on from my last thread, where previously I was price matching and making a loss, I'm deciding now whether to continue to invest time uploading products where I will definitely have to be more expensive, or not bother.

As a buyer, I don't see any sense in paying any more for the same product, so am wondering if I'm wasting my time listing certain items.

 

[NuBlue]

I would say it depends on what value you could add.

I would pay more if the product came quicker, came from the UK, came with a good returns/replacement policy etc.. over buying it at a bargain price but it has to be shipped from China and is going to be a nightmare if it arrives broken.

So yes, I would say it is worthwhile, but try and make sure the product is desirable for reasons other than price.

 

[ECS]

The sector I'm in is mainly UK sourced and sent products.

The other main competitors are Amazon itself and other British sellers with B&M stores.

These are all semi-professional products, and all of us pretty much offer the same service levels.

So from that point of view, as a buyer, to me it would seem silly to spend more on the same product / service level. However some of my competitors have got products listed at more expensive prices, so presumably they must be making some sales ?

Be good to hear if someone here is one of those who isn't the cheapest.

 

[HostLoveUK]

What are you selling and how can you add value to it if you are not the cheapest to ensure you look more attractive as a seller than the cheapest seller?

 

[deniser]

Not a seller but from an Amazon customer point of view, I quite often don't go for the cheapest but skip through to the one with the highest feedback. As an example, I was buying something yesterday and the cheapest one had 91% ranking and I skipped a couple of 95%s and went to the cheapest one which had 98%. There was probably £1 between the cheapest and the one I went for but I prefer the experience to be hassle free and would rather pay the extra £1 for it.

 

[IanG]

Does depend what you're selling but my general experience is that people are happier when they pay more.

Had a few people now tell me the only reason they used me was because my stuff was more.

See my other thread - I've had a cheaper guy cause me a problem this week.

My stuff is used though - so condition is a factor and goods are different between sellers.

 

[Faevilangel]

There are 2 types of buyers, price orientated and service orientated.

Price orientated will always try to get the cheapest item, even if it doesn't match their needs

Service orientated will pay more for the same item as they want value for money but also realise that they need the service if the need arises.

Aim your items at the service orientated buyer, offer the right things that will float their boat e.g.

- UK number for support
- UK made product

It's hard to offer a lot of advice without more info but make your product seem premium by clever use of wording and the photos.

 

[ECS]

Not a seller but from an Amazon customer point of view, I quite often don't go for the cheapest but skip through to the one with the highest feedback. As an example, I was buying something yesterday and the cheapest one had 91% ranking and I skipped a couple of 95%s and went to the cheapest one which had 98%. There was probably £1 between the cheapest and the one I went for but I prefer the experience to be hassle free and would rather pay the extra £1 for it.

........ I'm the same as you there. Problem is I'm new so have no feedback yet, which is why last week when I started off I was price matching, even though it was at a loss, to build up feedback. Was advised not to do that, and it was a bit galling 'paying' to make sales so stopped.

All my products are new and identical to the competitors. All of whom have excellent feedback.

BTW with the Ebay & Amazon guarantees are buyers still really looking at feedback scores ? I used to when the sites first started and bought only from those with a lot of sales and high feedback. Now as long as a seller doesn't have a lot of negatives, I'm not too bothered on their prior sales volume.

 

[ECS]

"Aim your items at the service orientated buyer, offer the right things that will float their boat "

Good advice. Will be doing that on my own website. Haven't worked out a way of doing that on Amazon though.

 

[HostLoveUK]

Do you prompt your buyers to leave feedback though once the product has been shipped etc? Sometimes this is the only thing that encourages me to leave feedback.

 

[deniser]

Do you prompt your buyers to leave feedback though once the product has been shipped etc? Sometimes this is the only thing that encourages me to leave feedback.

Yes, I will only leave it if a link is emailed to me and I can do it within seconds.

 

[JamieM]

The other thing to consider is that some people are lazy and on eBay for example might just happen to land on your listing first. Other sellers might be out of stock etc... just test it and see. You generally can't reason with ecommerce. I've sold loads on eBay in the past where we've not been the cheapest.

As an aside, it sounds like a tough competitive market you're entering. Why have you decided to sell products that seem so readily available?

 

[ECS]

As an aside, it sounds like a tough competitive market you're entering. Why have you decided to sell products that seem so readily available?

It's the industry I trained in. In actual fact a lot of the products are restricted and can only be sold by those in the industry. It's undercutting within the industry by ourselves that is the problem.

Happily though, a lot of other products have better margins. I thought I'd start with the low value low margin products first in order to showcase a wider range of items and not get too much money tied up in stock. Looks like I'll have to invest in the higher end things sooner, to actually stat making some money, though.

 

[cautiouscapy]

I don't remember the exact number, but I have read that on eBay, most people (around 80% IIRC) never change the order of their search result from the default "Best Match".

If you can learn to manipulate eBay's Best Match algorithm then your higher-priced items will appear higher up the Best Match results.

Offering "free" postage and Increasing your volume of sales will help get you up the Best Match results...I'm not sure what else, but have a Google about it, there are lots of people offering "how-to-do-its" for this.

 

[ecoleman]

We don't sell directly on Amazon purely because Amazon is full of cheap, nasty replacements and fakes from China sold at under a tenner.

We do however advertise using Amazon Product CPC which places our advert somewhere on a product page or search results page.

We get a lot of Sales referred from Amazon and we charge three times as much for a genuine product, sold from the UK and additional year warranty and a returns policy.

When we started of 5 years ago we were on ebay and we were selling there for much more than other similar products.
If you offer a good product, good service, fast shipping and returns you will sell.

I have never joined the price wars. At the end of the day everybody will loose as profits are eroded and the quality of goods goes down. My price is my price and I won't budge.

 

[deniser]

I have never joined the price wars. At the end of the day everybody will loose as profits are eroded and the quality of goods goes down. My price is my price and I won't budge.

Exactly my thoughts.

 

[ECS]

Hmmm, had never thought / knew about the Amazon PPC..... could be the way to go.

Good advice re: price wars.

 

[HostLoveUK]

Do you have your own online ecommerce website that is linked to your Amazon/eBay account?

 

[ECS]

No not linked ( not really sure what that is tbh) .... its a completely stand alone site.

Just launched so haven't really done anything with it yet at all.

Job for next week is to get my head round adwords and now AMZ PPC

 

[antropy]

As a buyer, I don't see any sense in paying any more for the same product, so am wondering if I'm wasting my time listing certain items.

I'd also pay more for a UK seller with good feedback.

 

[Pish_Pash]

I used to have a monopoly for the products I sell on Amazon...and accordingly, my markup was chunky. I noticed my Amazon disbursements were dropping & yep, sure enough I've competition...and sure enough he's undercutting me by a lot. So much so, that - whilst I have trimmed some prices - I'm not going to fight him on price (I'm not actually sure he's UK based...I actually think he may be sending to Amazon warehouses from abroad) ...obviously he's robbing me of sales, but surprisingly, I'm still selling stuff for products that he's much cheaper on. I've perfect 100% feedback...I also tout myself as the only authorised UK supplier - which I am - "beware of grey imports" in my seller specific schpiel blah blah. So in answer to the OP's question.....yes, I still get sales even though I'm not the cheapest.

 

[Mungo5]

I'll try not to sound too preachy in answering your question!

Any idiot can stand on the corner of the street and sell a £10 note for £9. It takes patience, hard work, curiosity, setbacks, worry, investment, friends, favors and more besides to sell a £10 note for £11. Fortunately most people do not possess these qualities - or at least are happy to just sell on price.

Price is only 1 of the 7 marketing 'P's' the others being Product, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence. Have a look at the websites of Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, John Lewis, Waitrose etc. and I'll bet you'll see plenty of items that are so called 'commodities' yet they sell them online anyway.

The trick to charging more and being successful is to give people reasons to use you. It may be how your eBay listing template looks, your returns policy, your feedback, how you package & send your goods out, what your invoices looks like (most competitors I've seen are rubbish), how your listing photos look to customers, how quick you respond to customers when they ask you a question etc, etc. All this adds up and means that you can justify the 'value gap'. What I mean by that is the price difference between you and your competitor. If you have not created enough perceived value then you won't be able to justify charging more.

I've been in field sales for nearly 20 years and have sold everything from Yellow Pages advertising to industrial electronics. If I had £5 for every time a potential customer said to me "it's all about price these days mate" I'd be a rich bloke. Things in life are rarely black and white, more often they are shades of grey. Very, very few people make purchasing decisions only on price and price alone. They might say they do, they might even think they do but they don't.

I'm not saying you don't have to be competitive and I'm not saying that commodities don't exist what I'm saying is that in order to sell anything you have to look at the overall value you are offering as a business to your customers.

Remember there is only 1 of you and that is something nobody else can copy!

 

[rockylee]

we thought price is one issue, others things more important than price, like service, delivery time ,ect, if your earn clients' trust, you will make impossible possible

 

[ECS]

Just an update.

Following my initial post, I put up the prices on most of the products on Amazon by a few pounds. The old prices were loss making, and the new ones just about break even once P&P, fees etc are factored in.

Anyway, since the increase not a single one of the previously sold products has re-sold !

I don't blame people really, as why pay more for the same thing. In terms of service etc, the competitors are pretty similar to us, plus they have more feedback, having been around for longer, so customers are are able to buy the same item, service level etc cheaper.

I know that y competitors aren't buying the products significantly cheaper, but they may have better postal rates. Anyway I can't compete with them so I'm going to concentrate on promoting my own site and finding more niche products.

 

[japancool]

For those of you talking about customer service and other factors, bear this in mind...

Yes, those things are very important. If you provide a better service than your competitors, then word will spread and people will avoid them. But a lower price does not necessarily mean poorer service or a lower quality product. What happens when, or if your competitors improve or match your service levels, while still being cheaper?

Aldi and Lidl are gobbling up market share from the big four supermarkets, in a way that Nettos and KwikSave never managed to do. They wouldn't be doing that if their products were inferior.

 

[Alan]

In a previous business I sold on e-bay, Amzon & via my own online shop.

I can confirm 100% in my experience that if an exact same product is 5p cheaper than the competitors it will sell and 5p more expensive it won't (on items with values of £10-£100).

Inevitably this means prices and margins will be driven down, so only the largest volume providers can survive.

However, as a consumer, service level and trust come into play, so there is hope if you can gain (or portray) a great reputation. e.g my wife buys groceries online, and keeps using one of the cheaper supermarkets, but is now so fed up with having to complain about getting items with just 1 or 2 days expiry, that now she is moving 'up' a level.

 

[Pish_Pash]

I
I can confirm 100% in my experience that if an exact same product is 5p cheaper than the competitors it will sell and 5p more expensive it won't (on items with values of £10-£100).

I second that emotion ...never under-estimate just how tight the great British consumers are!