Hammertap: Competing without lowering prices

October 9, 2008

Jen and Amy from HammerTap hosted a webinar this evening to give an insight on how to avoid a price war. This is of particular interest with eBay UK moving to Best Match where promoting the “best deals” often equates to “lowest price”. The webinar looked at ways to make your products stand out and appeal to buyers which, with Recent Sales search advantage, should help you to the top of Best Match results.

All things being equal the lowest price will win the price war, so the only effective way that sellers can make themselves stand out is to differentiate themselves from the competition.

HammerTap suggested four ways to take yourself out of competition with other sellers and differentiate your products:

  1. Change the product itself, make your product different to the competitions. This could be as simple as branding the packaging.
  2. Market to a new audience, e.g. Instead of selling a Wii to gamers, market it as a fitness product with the Wii Fit
  3. Add on value, e.g. Make your laptops stand out buy adding on a free laptop case or add a memory card with a PDA
  4. Bulk - Buyers will often want to purchase larger quantities, experiment with different quantities on a single listing.

Non-price competition is usually more profitable than selling for a lower price and avoids a price war. If you can make your product stand out from the crowd you can still attract buyers whilst retaining healthy margins.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Selling Tips | 23 Comments 

Hammertap webinar: “Avoiding the Price War”

October 2, 2008

Hammertap are to hold an online seminar on Wednesday 8th October to discuss how sellers can use competitive analysis and buyer behavior to differentiate their products, stand out from the crowd and avoid a price war.

With the introduction of Best Match in the UK and recent sales often pushing the lowest price products to the top of search results this workshop couldn’t come at a better time.

Talking about price wars Amy Kendall of Hammertap said “Price wars are based on the fact that ‘All things being equal…the lowest price always wins the war’. “The trick is to make things unequal and add value to your listings so you can avoid the war altogether.”

The webinar will feature HammerTap software, but is open to all eBay sellers, you’ll need to reserve a place and the seminar starts at 6pm MDT on Wednesday.

(I believe 6pm MDT is 1am Thursday in the UK, so one for the night owls to attend… If I’ve got the time wrong please let me know in comments and I’ll edit :-) )

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under Events | 10 Comments 

Free webinar on market research for selling vintage items

July 10, 2008

This Monday, eBay research specialists HammerTap are holding a free webinar on using market research tools to help sell vintage and one-of-a-kind items on eBay. Run by Steve Nye, HammerTap’s Research Education Director, and Amy Kendall, a HammerTap education specialist, the seminar will discuss how to research unique items and how to discover selling trends attracting high-paying collectors.

The 45 minute session will be followed by 30 minutes of Q&A. It’s on the telephone, so call in via Skype and it should be an almost-free call. You can sign up for the webinar via GoToMeeting’s site.

Written by Sue Bailey · Filed Under Events | 1 Comment