The problem with statistics is they can be misused, miscalculated, misunderstood, or misinterpreted.
I liken this to what I do almost everyday in my quest to understand what makes things sell. Years ago I gave up the hope that I would ever truly understand what causes sales surges and lack thereof because there are simply far too many variables.
Here, assumptions have been made that it is the gender of the seller that makes a difference, when there is a gender (ie not a company etc). These statistics are across all categories. We all know how inaccurate it is to assume things that work in my stamps world will also work in the DVD world for example.
Femme had a good point about different responses to the different id's but is it because of gender, or is it because people associate differently with the ebay id names that have been chosen or even perhaps the icons one is associating with their id! (Femme as a note I'm not poking at either but it is entirely possible the difference is due to that as it is to gender). There can be many things that affect how a buyer sees a seller.
I can imagine that a seller with an ebay id picture of a person bicycling may not sell as well in a car racing category as a person with an ebay id picture of a race car, for example. (this is why I chose my picture of an aerial shot of a box full of stamps because it exemplifies the nature of a lot of what I sell)
I think momc's question/suggestion that ebay provide opportunities/workshops for sellers to better understand things they can do to improve their success is good if these statistics are sound in one's category, just as ebay does for things like the value of returns, good pictures, good item descriptions etc.
Personally I doubt the general stats can be held to hold much value for any given category for the reasons above, but they do raise some good things to think about in terms of how customers perceive us as sellers from many different aspects, including gender.
BMerTmWU1!~~_7.JPG "lotzofuniquegoodies"){kind=avatar}
