It’s not as simple as trying to make money, if you’re the seller, or finding a bargain, if you’re the buyer.
Well, not if you’re on eBay.
There’s a whole new psychology at play.
The reasons for buying and selling are very different, to what we understand in the rarefied world of Sales and Marketing.
On ebay, selling can be a way of life, a way to find people with similar interests, make contacts and expand your network.
The same goes with buying.
Buyers often spend money, they don’t have, in order to meet people, they may never have met. Again it’s the social interaction that’s more important than the purchase.
We recently sold a clothes dryer on eBay for $30.
We were glad to get rid of it, at any price, because it would save us from having to hire a van and take it to the tip.
This would have cost us $100+.
Now the guy who bought our dryers only concern was, does it work? He wasn’t interested in what it looked like or was it the latest model.
His wife, who was new to Melbourne, had discovered the vagaries of our weather and needed to have more control over the drying of her laundry.
So his motivation was to get his wife off his back while ours was to save a dollar, not make one.
Brands or marketing spin played no part in this sale.
We had a needed to sell, and he wanted to buy, however our motivations were not the normal supply and demand paradigm.
I wonder if, in these times of social media, the psychology of buying and selling might become redefined and be more like the eBay model?
