'Trending at' in search results?

[momcqueen]

What is this 'trending at' that I've just seen among a seller's item listings? 

• C $20.87
  Trending at C $23.17
• Buy It Now
• +C $9.27 shipping

And then the explanation is "This is the median price based on sales of this product in the same condition from all listings onebay.com in the past 14 days, or if there are any insufficient number of listings for a meaningful calculation, the past 90 days."

When did this begin? Is it coming to ebay.ca? I haven't been following the ebay.com announcements. 

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Yeah I am seeing it too.  When I posted one item at $55.00 and the trend comes up with $199.99 and I went Whoa and changed to price to $199.99.

As far as I am concerned if the same item I have did sold for that price, then I should list at this price as well.

Some other time the trend comes up with prices much lower than my starting price or fixed-priced and I ignore that.

[aubreyclay56]

that is the average price it sells for on ebay doesnt mean its worth that much,if its a 10 dollar item its worth any wear from 6 buck to 12 bucks 

[femmefan1946]

As far as I am concerned if the same item I have did sold for that price, then I should list at this price as well.

Well, yeah, but.

When we were selling our house in Ottawa, there were five other houses for sale on the same street. Some had been listed for months, one for two years.

A neighbour asked why ours sold so quickly.  I said, "List for less than a million dollars.' (It was an expensive street in an expensive neighbourhood. Don't judge.)

Fast nickel or slow dime?

[rose-dee]

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@mjwl2006 wrote:

When did this begin? Is it coming to ebay.ca? I haven't been following the ebay.com announcements. 

---

I'm not sure when this started, but I don't recall seeing it yet on .ca (I could be wrong).  I saw this and my first thought was: this is just the latest method eBay is using to attempt to control the market by "nudging" sellers toward the pricing eBay expects will create a sale.  

As an adjunct, I notice on .com that eBay is also now displaying above the main description section of a seller's listing no less, a whole panel of items from other sellers with the heading: "What other buyers are looking at", or words to that effect.  As a seller, I'd be pretty upset about this.  

Then go down to the very bottom, and you'll find the eBay sponsored links to non-eBay sellers.  

Consider this: all these things are subtle way to manipulate buyers and create a price war amongst sellers. How can we know how accurate (or for that matter, how meaningful) eBay's calculations are?  How can we know they are even bona fide?  

This is all well and good if, like 'honeybed'  you happen to find your item is significantly under-priced according to eBay's "median".  

But if you offer an item at what you believe is a competitive price, leaving room for a modest profit, and with reasonable shipping (after doing your "good seller" homework), and then find eBay telling buyers your price is well above the median, won't you feel obliged to price below the median to attract customers, even if your quality and service may be better?  Buyers will otherwise choose to just walk on by. 

Pressure, pressure, pressure.  EBay never stops wanting to tweak and fiddle and interfere with the free market.  

[momcqueen]

It has begin to pop up on ebay.ca but only randomly. In hindsight, I think this could be due to certain items being listed with certain new product identifiers in place. 

A savvy ebay buyer won't be swayed by this. He or she will have noticed 'free shipping' messages popping up in search results where free shipping doesn't exist (therefore leading to doubt as to the integrity of the 'trending at' message) and know in advance that while some items may be the same, sellers and their policies and customer service are very different. Mind you, this will be the buyer who has already been stung with multiple Item Not Received or Item as Described problems. They will have learned to shop from sellers where they might actually receive what they have paid for, and that the grief of opening Resolution Centre cases is not worth whatever you might think you save by getting it cheaper if you get it at all. 

Besides that, my buy-it-now prices are set to a point where I might hope to make some money on them. I have come into possession of the items that I sell legitimately; it's not a five-finger discount item that I'm trying to unload at any price so I'm not satisfied with one-dollar profit and the rest to ebay, paypal and postage. I'm not bowing to pressure to drop my prices. I do my own loss leaders to draw sales when it suits me. While I've no doubt that ebay would like to get rid of the million listings of junk no one wants at that price, they'd be smarter to look at those sellers and their feedback, not just price points. Or, better yet: dam the flood of cheap j-u-n-k on North American sites from backdoor sources in the east.