For anyone interested in eBay Statistics.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

I have not checked for accuracy. But interesting to say the least.

https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/ebay-stats/

-CM

[momcqueen]

Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

But this:

“Women sellers earn an average of 80 cents on every dollar that men earn on eBay.”

Now just a cotton-picking second here: eBay may know whether the seller is male or female based on the common usage of their given name but there’s no possible way for buyers to know, only guess. Maybe. Sometimes. So how is this stat possible? Why would this be the case? Anyone hazard a guess? I’m skeptical.

[momcqueen]

Or perhaps I’m misunderstanding the stat.

[hlmacdon]

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@momcqueenwrote:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

But this:

“Women sellers earn an average of 80 cents on every dollar that men earn on eBay.”

Now just a cotton-picking second here: eBay may know whether the seller is male or female based on the common usage of their given name but there’s no possible way for buyers to know, only guess. Maybe. Sometimes. So how is this stat possible? Why would this be the case? Anyone hazard a guess? I’m skeptical.

---

Pseudoscience, aka sociology. 

[momcqueen]

If my user name is toys4U and my icon is the face of a generic LEGO minifig and I sell 50/50 Barbies and Hot Wheels, there’s no way for buyers to tell whether they’d be buying from a man, or a woman, or a partnership of both, or a consortium. So how? Women sellers undervalue their goods? Women shoppers spend less on women products when they buy from women sellers? Man sellers stand firm on Best Offer prices because they don’t feel compelled to please other people? That stat doesn’t make sense to me. I need clarification. Maybe I need to spend $3 on their report. Or I can ask someone who works at eBay if this is, in fact, the case.

Or does it mean that man sellers are selling higher-value products than women. Like men sell $500 iPhones on eBay while women sell $50 shoes.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

I was hoping someone was going to splurge and share the whole report. Right now my sales are terrible and it really wasn't in the budget!!  😞

-CM

[hlmacdon]

---

@momcqueenwrote:
If my user name is toys4U and my icon is the face of a generic LEGO minifig and I sell 50/50 Barbies and Hot Wheels, there’s no way for buyers to tell whether they’d be buying from a man, or a woman, or a partnership of both, or a consortium. So how? Women sellers undervalue their goods? Women shoppers spend less on women products when they buy from women sellers? Man sellers stand firm on Best Offer prices because they don’t feel compelled to please other people? That stat doesn’t make sense to me. I need clarification. Maybe I need to spend $3 on their report. Or I can ask someone who works at eBay if this is, in fact, the case.

Or does it mean that man sellers are selling higher-value products than women. Like men sell $500 iPhones on eBay while women sell $50 shoes.

---

Sellers and competitive pressures within a product/category dictate selling prices. Unless I am missing something male buyers don't receive a pop up asking them if they would rather submit a best offer then buy something at the listed price because the previously unknown gender seller in fact has turned out to be female, and thus willing to accept a better price. I too would be morbidly curious to see how these conclusions were derived. Should about as convincing as ebay seller recommendations based on big data...

[recped]

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@momcqueenwrote:
Interesting. Thanks for sharing that.

But this:

“Women sellers earn an average of 80 cents on every dollar that men earn on eBay.”

Now just a cotton-picking second here: eBay may know whether the seller is male or female based on the common usage of their given name but there’s no possible way for buyers to know, only guess. Maybe. Sometimes. So how is this stat possible? Why would this be the case? Anyone hazard a guess? I’m skeptical.

---

This stat has nothing to do with buyers!

I take it to mean that on average female sellers generate 80% of the revenues as male sellers. Of course it's a very broad statistic which could be the result of many different things. It could be that male sellers work harder, it could mean that female sellers generally sell cheaper items or lower value items, it could mean that the high volume sellers are run mostly by male owners. It could mean that more female sellers operate on a part-time or casual basis.

Without knowing the background methodology and the stats used to arrive at 80% makes this particular stat rather meaningless. Not so with a "hard" number like how many employees eBay has.

[reallynicestamps]

Interestingly-- but quite anecdotally- - one of the names I tend to post under is quite female, and this one uses a male icon.

It seems to me that I get a lot more critical comment when I post under the 'feminine' name.

However, this is a lot more true on dotCOM than here on dotCA, where I suppose more people know my secret identities.

And I was just dealing with a customer who uses a female name on his Paypal account, possibly his wife's name, although he signs a male name in our discussions.

[reallynicestamps]

Also interesting that there are no newer eBay stats on the number of sellers than from 2015.

Since those are eBay's actual customers, you'd think they'd be more up to date.

[tobyshitzu]

You can read the study that comes from...based on Auction data from 2009-2012.  http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/2/e1500599.full

No way im reading that

[reallynicestamps]

Six years ago?

Well, that's not worth a fig.

[momcqueen]

Probably it isn't. But I'm still annoyed by that particular statistic and not knowing what it's supposed to mean. The rest all sounds fine and logical like 25 million sellers, yes, okay that makes sense. Isn't ebay generally tightlipped about these things? As a seller, for example, I'd like to know how many others like me are out there but it seems like ebay only releases this data in places I'm not likely to be nosing around. Like shareholder meetings. If I could afford company shares, I wouldn't be trying to hawk 99 cent diecasts for $10. I exaggerate but you know what I mean. 

[momcqueen]

Also, I will read that. Thanks for the link. Stay tuned for my brilliant interpretation. Sarcasm sarcasm. 

[momcqueen]

p.s. I'm already engaged and I've only gotten through the Abstract. It was my worst-case scenario from above: "Women sellers received a smaller number of bids and lower final prices than did equally qualified men sellers of the exact same product. On average, women sellers received about 80 cents for every dollar a man received when selling the identical new product and 97 cents when selling the same used product." -  How many cents on the dollar? Women and men in product markets by Tamar Kricheli-Katz1,*,† and Tali Regev2

What the actual &%$#? They must have a theory for this. I'll report back. 

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

I don't recall the exact wording I used for the search to locate that particular survey but it did take several attempts to appear. Was originally searching total gross sales by country and came across that survey by accident. Like all surveys most important to take the findings with a grain of salt.

-CM

[momcqueen]

This study founds things that are cray-cray:

• Study used actual market data: all eBay auction transactions of most popular products by private sellers between the years 2009 and 2012;
• Study found that women sellers received a smaller number of bids and lower final prices than did equally qualified men sellers of the exact same product;
• Women sellers received on average 80 cents for every dollar a man received when selling the identical new product and 97 cents when selling the same used product; this gap varied by the type of the product being sold;
• eBay does not reveal the gender of users, therefore the price differences were attributed to the ability of buyers to discern the gender of the seller. People accurately identify the gender of sellers on the basis of typical information provided in postings;

• There are fewer women sellers than men on ebay, and women tended to have less experience as sellers but better reputations than the men did. As sellers, women tended to set a higher start price in auctions and were slightly more willing to pay for setting a hidden reserve price than their male counterparts;

• Women buyers were found to prefer purchasing products from women sellers rather than from men sellers;

• The effect of being a woman seller is greater for new products than for old ones. When selling used products, women received final prices that were 2.9% lower than the prices received by men, for new products, women received prices that were 19.7% lower;

• The study also showed that women buyers tend to pay more than men buyers for the same products, and 

• The authors of the study supplement the analysis with an additional off-eBay experiment showing that, in a controlled setting, people are willing to pay less for money-value gift cards when they are sold by women rather than men.

This sets my blood to boil.

[momcqueen]

@happy_pigeon, or tyler@ebay  can you comment on the finding of this study? I recommend the PDF version found here:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/2/2/e1500599.full.pdf

Was corporate ebay aware of these findings and, if so, have any measures been taken to level the playing field? Support for women entrepreneurs? I'm not generally a bra-burning march-for-equality-type of person, but I do get upset when I see such blatant gender disparity. 

[momcqueen]

@reallynicestamps wrote:

Interestingly-- but quite anecdotally- - one of the names I tend to post under is quite female, and this one uses a male icon.

It seems to me that I get a lot more critical comment when I post under the 'feminine' name.

However, this is a lot more true on dotCOM than here on dotCA, where I suppose more people know my secret identities.....

---

Yes, I recall having a conversation much like this with you when, one Christmas season and maybe it was 2014? 2015, I came to the Boards for consolation and/or advice because I had a SLEW of extremely super rude unsolicited messages from other users, not buyers, but shoppers. Like super rude from several different folks running the gamut of insults on my prices to, well, my prices. I guess they really were all about prices.

You suggested (and I don't disagree) that it may be due to my avatar.

Certainly, I have never tried to obscure the fact I am female (although the photo I use as an avatar is not me; it is a member of my family) and at times I have suspected that other users (who generally self-identified as men in their messages) were under the mistaken impression they would be able to intimidate me because I am a woman and they are not, but I honestly would never have believed that being identified as female puts me at a significant disadvantage against my male counterparts. That makes me angry. Almost angry enough to change my user name to Mister Man Pants and His Pile of Angry

Sons and my avatar to this:

The new-and-improved Moe McQueen and Sons

Or maybe I could add an 'e' to Moe and use this one:

Free eye-poke with purchase

[ypdc_dennis]

Based on the data you mentioned, the conclusions are:

1. If selling new stuff and your seller ID appears to be "female" then you should use BIN, if your ID is "male" you should use auction.

2. If selling used stuff it doesn't matter.

...

I really don't have much respect for any study that ignores "other" -- in this case, those sellers who are gender neutral (companies, couples, foreign names) when compiling their results.

-..-