Todd Hollander Market Research

Have you ever shopped on eBay? If so, you know that one of the most important factors influencing a buyer’s decision is the seller’s feedback rating, a score on a scale of 1 to 100 which is a measure of that seller’s customer satisfaction. These ratings have proven to be one of the most influential aspects of the buyer’s decision about which eBay seller they will choose when making a purchase.

As a result of this system of measuring customer satisfaction, many eBay buyers will now consider purchasing products only from “PowerSellers.” These are eBay sellers who maintain a consistently high volume of monthly sales and positive Feedback (minimum of 98%) from their eBay customers.

In other words, a seller who has the “PowerSeller” icon next to their user ID has a significantly better chance of selling an item than one who does not.

This system is good for consumers, in that it strongly motivates sellers to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. It is also good for sellers, in that it mitigates the need to have the lowest price for an item, as many buyers are willing to pay slightly more for an item offered by a PowerSeller than for an identical item offered for a lower price by a seller with lower customer satisfaction (thus increasing the odds of getting the item on time and as described).

The bottom line: eBay is another example of the power of customer satisfaction to influence buyer behavior and increase revenue and profit.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 11:01 am and is filed under Customer Satisfaction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.