EBay: What the Heck is a TSE?

A new phrase and its companion acronym made its debut in the earnings call the other day: The Tailored Shopping Experience or TSE. This is the first time I've heard such emphasis on the "Tailored" Shopping Experience coming from eBay. It was mentioned 8 times in the transcript and provides a glimpse into the eBay of the future.

Quote from Bob Swan, eBay CFO - "Obviously, Express is a very important TSE for us to get more share of wallet. We want to continue to look at other categories that we think we can expand our tailored offering to grow within those and potentially new categories." Meg Whitman also said "As you recall, eBay Express is a tailored shopping experience for the convenience-oriented shopper. We were targeting existing buyers to increase the share of wallet. "

I thought eBay stores were supposed to be a TSE for the convenience-oriented shopper all they needed to do was promote them. If they had made store inventory the listing "feeder" for eBay Express as they originally planned and promoted Express as the platform for eBay stores the turmoil over fee increases would have died down quickly.

My impression, when eBay launched Express earlier this year, was they were going after new customers not "more share of wallet" from existing customers. What was the point of spending millions of dollars on those poorly produced Express ads then? Ina Steiner has an interesting take regarding this change in focus at her blog so I won't spend much time on this. I want to continue discussing this TSE idea.

Here is a list of current eBay TSE marketplaces, according to the earnings call transcript: eBay Motors, eBay Express, Shopping.com, and Meg vaguely referred to their Classifieds portfolio as a TSE (Kijiji, MarketPlus and Gumtree, among others) One marketplace she didn't mention is Half.com and I think this is the next big move coming down the pike. Media inventory was the main reason for the Stores fee increase and not enough of it went away to eBay's liking so they now will be rolling Half.com into eBay.com as the Media TSE. How they plan to do this is unknown but it will be the next move. (Remember you read it here first).

If eBay uses the .com platform to feed listings to Half.com and therefore eBay.com search then the plan will work for media sellers. If they choose the Half.com platform to feed listings to eBay.com it will fail miserably. Take that from a former #1 Media Seller on eBay.

I've got an idea for you eBay! Use Stores as the hosting solution that feeds each of these marketplaces with listings. You have far more eBay Stores than you will ever hope to have with ProStores. Require every seller to have a store for their inventory (this may tick off some CORE sellers but it makes since). Charge sellers a tiered monthly hosting fee based on inventory and let them list according to their own marketing plan. Each marketplace will have its own listing profile and listing fees. If sellers choose not to list on these marketplaces, that will be there decision, they can find some other way to get shoppers to their items. But what seller is going to do that. Enable them to feed their listings to CORE, Express, Shopping.com, Half.com, etc. (BTW, I've launched a new blog about IDEAS called the Digital Napkin, check it out. I've got more ideas where this came from).

I've been very critical of eBay for the moves they've made this year so it surprises me that I see some positives in this march towards TSE marketplaces. I have written about eBay's vulnerability in Vertical marketplaces and this TSE approach seems to address that issue head on. I also think it makes the rumors of a StubHub purchase even more likely to come to fruition.

If eBay can create TSE's for Collectibles, Electronics, etc. they can re-invigorate the marketplace and keep the TSE competition at bay. The best way to improve their relationship with sellers (if they care to) is to make a more successful marketplace. TSE marketplaces are the right move.

Wow, for once I feel I have something constructive to say about eBay. These moves can still fail if they implement them the way they did Stores and Express; so stay tuned. eBay management's arrogance may still get in the way. (I'm sorry I couldn't help myself)