@pierrelebel wrote:
"Does slight "currency fluctuation" really matter?"
Not really. I think many Canadian sellers misunderstand how pricing works on eBay's marketplace.
If an item is worth US$10.00 to an American or €9.30 to a German or Italian, the same will sell just as well if priced at Cdn$13.00
The buyer sees the converted price in search results. When priced at Cdn$13.00, the American buyers see US$10.00 in their search result page while the European sees €9.30.
This is all very true, but not the whole story. For any seller whose primary marketplace has traditionally been the U.S., there are other important considerations.
If for example, my U.S. competitors are selling an item at $16.99 US and I want to be sure my U.S. buyers will always see a stable price when comparing my items (which I would list at $15.95), then listing in $US is the only answer. I simply do not want my U.S. buyers to see my prices jumping up and down, however slight the fluctuations may be. There is a reason prices are set at $12.99 and not $13.00 -- this is a marketing truth as old as commerce.
The only way to avoid this problem would be to monitor and adjust Canadian dollar pricing frequently -- and who wants to have to do that when there is a far easier way (listing in $US)?
I also believe there is a difference between the "international" buyer and the U.S. buyer. A European (or any non-US buyer for that matter) may be more receptive and accustomed to seeing foreign currencies displayed once they click on a listing (along with the converted price in their own currency), but I think U.S. buyers will expect to see pricing only in U.S. currency when buying on what they consider "their" U.S. site (eBay.com). In my view, the display of a Canadian equivalent next to their own currency says "foreign" to a U.S. buyer, particularly one who hasn't done a great deal of buying online outside of U.S. retailers.
A related problem I see is that the Canadian number of the price shown on the listing will be considerably bigger than the U.S. dollar price (by around 25% with the existing currency exchange). We all know how little attention is paid by many buyers to details, and that may be especially true of newer eBay buyers using mobile devices.
My point is, why deliberately take any risk at all in turning off buyers because of the above factors if you have an overwhelmingly U.S. market, especially if your competitors are largely or wholly in the U.S.? It makes no sense to me to list in $Cdn when I have the ability to list in the currency that is the lingua franca of the vast majority of my buyers.
One more thing: I just don't buy that eBay Canada's "new advice" in this regard is in completely good faith. I may be alone in this view, but I think eBay needed to find a way to convince or cajole Canadian sellers into listing more items in $Cdn on eBay.ca because eventually there will be no choice. What would the result be for eBay.ca if the vast majority of Canadian sellers migrated their listings to .com from one day to the next once eBay closed the gates on listing in $US on .ca? So I have to wonder for whose benefit this "new advice" (and the $Cdn listing promo) are really intended.
Without providing us with some of the defining data behind their "new advice", in my view whatever recommendation eBay Canada makes to us with regard to listing currency is not only suspect but also meaningless. I think every seller simply has to do what they know has been working best for their particular situation, for rational, real-world reasons.
All this being said, as I've mentioned before, the effect may be different if you have (or expect to have) a significant Canadian buyer base and/or items that will appeal to Canadians, and/or if you are in a category whose buyers who are generally older or more sophisticated. But then that has always been true anyway. We didn't need "new advice" to figure that out.
