Best Offer — surprising results

[Geoff]

Traditionally I have not used Best offer that much. Recently I had an issue in my business that had be realign all of my listings — long story short – for the first time nearly all of my listing have best offer turned on. Now it has only been a couple of weeks – but what surprises me so far is:

– the amount of ‘good’ offers i get. Very few and far between i get the truly low ball offer, more often i get offers that I consider completely fair and good.

– I am shocked that a lot of people just buy the item out right.

Now I do not have a ton of data to work off of but i figured i would just share my thoughts as i am curious if anyone has looked at data who may go over a few years or something (percentage of times people just buy flat our, for example, when best offer is an option). One hypothesis as to why buyers are buying items out right and leaving money on the table is perhaps people want to take advantage of guarantee delivery, which is only available i believe if someone chooses the buy it now feature. If that is the case that is a really great (perhaps unintended) consequence of guarantee delivery. To know if that is the case someone would have had to have been keeping some kind of record over the years to compare GD to no GD.

Off to shovel!

[Retro Treasures WV]

Haggling is a regional and cultural thing. Many folks simply don’t know to haggle. Many folks take it as a sense of pride to pay full price. Many folks use BIN when the listing only has hours or minutes left because they are not aware it will simply relist.

Bottom line, there are many reasons why items sell BIN with best offer on. But as you now know, having best offer definitely does more good than harm.

[Jay]

Yeh, I think some people just want the item. Making an offer drags out the experience. This is why many buyers avoid bidding on auctions.

But there is a healthy sub-section of buyers who like to make offers and get deals.

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hey Jay.. I would like to maybe revisit the topic of Make an Offer vs. Not and at what elevel.

I know you have mentioned through the last few years that you began to raise the price point at which point you would take offers. I think it used to be only take offers over $19.95, then you raised it to $29.95 then again higher still. The discussion at that time was to try to circumvent getting offers of $10 on a $20 item, because it took up so much time to answer them, accept or counter for only $10.

As we have grown in store size we too have experienced this and feel that fielding “offers” takes a lot of time, especially if we counter, and as you say “drags out the process” also. I find that I need to focus that time in other areas. Even though we do get a lot of accepted counters we make, it still takes time to “close the deal”.

Currently we have our store set to not take offers on anything less than $32.00 but find when we run periodic Sales, 2 or 3 times a month that when we use a 15% or 20% Off Sale Store Wide, that drops the BIN Price down to $25.60 and thus we still get offers around $17.92 [a 30% off offer]. I think that the buyers don’t see or recognize that the item is already at a 20% off Sale and that their 30% OFFER puts the price at 50% off the actual original listing price.

So we are thinking of moving our price point up to $50 or higher with MO and without MO on all items lower than $49.99. Since we run Sales about 20 days out of each month that makes a $50 item discounted to $39.99 with the 20% Sale applied and then if the buyer offers a number at what they think is 30% off the Sale price, then at least at $28 dollars it may be worth the time to deal with a counter.

So, wondering your thoughts on the price point you guys are currently using?

I think you said long ago to list high and put Make Offer on most things. But I don’t know if you know it, but on your #1 larger store, that out of 5,963 items you guys only have 986 with Make Offer on them, which is 16.5% of your store and 84% [5,008] don’t have make an offer on them. And, out of the 986 that have MO on them that 495 are under $50 and 95 of those are under $29.95.

So I am wondering if you have altered your approach on the issue of placing MO on all items over a certain price point? Or, is it because I see you guys are placing a “Store Wide Sale” on your store and due to the reduced price by the Sale Percentage, that you take the MO off of all the items while they are on Sale?

Just wondering while I am seeing a scenario that seems contrary to the original discussions a couple of years ago. Mainly interested because of thinking about taking the MO off about half our store, items under $50.

thanks for any update in your thinking on this topic.

Mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta

[Jay]

Yeah, I think we mentioned we just put Make Offer on items over $50. But if we feel we’ve done the research, then we’ll let prices ride. When we want items gone, we’ll add Make Offer to older items. We’re not scientific about things.

[Author]

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