Increasigly impatient online consumers are opting for fixed-price purchases over auctions, reports Catherine Holahan in the BusinessWeek article “Auctions on eBay: A Dying Breed.”
Sales at Amazon.com, the leader in online fixed-price goods sales, rose 37% in the first quarter of 2008. At eBay, where auctions make up 58 per cent of the site’s sales, revenue rose just 14%.
Hence, fixed-priced items appears key to eBay’s future growth. EBay’s “Buy It Now” business, where consumers can purchase auction items at a set price, makes up 42% of all goods sold on eBay and is growing at an annual 22% pace. That’s the fastest among eBay’s shopping businesses.
It shows just how impatient Web users are. The novelty of the Web is gone. Consumers just want to get to a site, complete a task and move on in as little time as possible.
It seems the term “browsing the Web” is quickly becoming obsolete.
People are getting pissy because there’s so much garbage on the web. Garbage = wasted time.