Paola Bonomo joined eBay’s team in 2005 as Marketing Director for Italy. She is responsible for the entire spectrum of marketing channels, both online and offline, merchandising activities on the eBay.it website, the direct mail program, and communication and Community activities. She is also active in topics related to the convergence between ecommerce, Internet communication, and mobile telephony. Previously, she was a Principal at McKinsey, the global leader in strategic consulting, where she served top management of large Italian and international companies on issues of strategic positioning, growth, market entry, alliances, and acquisitions. She holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California and a degree from the Luigi Bocconi University of Milan.
What is eBay? eBay is the world’s most important community for online buying and selling. Founded in 1995, eBay has also operated in Italy since 2001 with the site www.eBay.it, and over the years it has created the largest global web platform for buying and selling all types of goods and services by private consumers, distributors and merchants, and small and large businesses. Every day, millions of items are for sale on the site, divided into thousands of categories and available through auctions or fixed prices. What is the Italian online sales market like and what are the prospects? The Italian market is less developed than in other European countries (particularly Germany, the United Kingdom, and France), but it is growing rapidly and I believe it has great development potential. Naturally, online commerce faces some barriers that are more significant in Italy than in other countries: for example, the limited habit of distance shopping (in Italy even mail-order sales have always been a limited phenomenon), higher shipping costs, or Italians’ lesser familiarity with credit cards and online banking. However, I believe that eBay’s success shows that even Italian habits are changing: those who experience the advantages of online shopping, such as the vast assortment and value of offers, realize that shopping online is a much more convenient solution than going around stores and standing in line at the checkout, searching for something that instead can be bought via the Internet with a few clicks. What are the differences between eBay and traditional ecommerce? Compared to a traditional ecommerce site, which necessarily has a limited assortment, eBay’s strength lies in the vastness of the offer: on the Italian site alone, there are currently over 3,500 product categories. This is also possible because eBay was born as a platform open to everyone, where you don’t have to be a company; even private individuals can sell objects they no longer need (but which someone else surely appreciates), maybe to then buy the object of their desires (http://www.ebay.it/changeit/). Finally, hunting for deals on eBay can also become an exciting hobby. Many items, in fact, are not sold at a predefined price but at auction, often starting from 1 euro: so in the last minutes of a listing the bargain hunt can stimulate a truly fierce competition! Who is eBay targeted at? As I mentioned above, eBay is a site for everyone; in fact, today there are 193 million registered users worldwide, of which over 3 million are in Italy. Among buyers, most choose eBay to buy everyday items, from the latest model sneakers to mobile phones, to summer sunscreen or flat screen TVs for watching World Cup matches; but certainly there is also the possibility of making more unusual purchases, like buying a wedding dress or stocking up on diapers for the baby. Among sellers, there are those who complement their physical sales channel, or their own store, with a virtual channel, reaching potential customers worldwide; those who use eBay to clear stock and end-of-season leftovers; those who have turned their hobby, from model airplanes to crochet, embroidery and patchwork, into a profitable activity; and finally those who sell occasionally, for example when they decide to change the car or motorcycle and choose to sell it using eBay’s large showcase. It should be noted that selling on eBay has now become a professional or semi-professional activity for many: according to an AC Nielsen study, for over 8,000 Italians commercial activity on eBay constitutes their main or an important source of income. What are the hesitations of buyers or sellers and how do you address this issue? For those starting to buy, the concerns are those we can easily imagine given Italians’ traditional distrust: often the first online purchase happens when a friend or acquaintance has bought something online and firsthand experienced that the purchased item arrived and matched the description. It is precisely satisfied users who create the word of mouth through which eBay usage spreads rapidly. We always recommend, not only to beginners, to check the seller’s feedback score, an indicator of their reliability and fairness in past transactions. Finally, for the rare cases when something goes wrong, those who have bought on eBay can in any case access our buyer protection programs, available at http://pages.ebay.it/sicurezza/acquisti/protezione.html. Those starting to sell, instead, must initially get familiar with the tool, although after listing the first items the process is very simple; in any case companies that want more help can book telephone assistance sessions offered free of charge by our commercial support service for small and medium enterprises, http://www.ebay.it/321vendi/. How do you handle the security issue? Online security is an absolute priority for us; for example, to defend against spoof, fake emails and websites, we have provided our users with the eBay Toolbar, which once installed in the browser recognizes potentially counterfeit sites and alerts us if our account is at risk. We also give great importance to fighting counterfeits: in particular, we collaborate with intellectual property rights holders, such as copyright, trademarks or patents, through the specific VeRO program (http://vero.ebay.it/). More generally, we have created a dedicated section on the site, the Safety Space (http://sicurezza.ebay.it/), which provides all the information, tools, and resources useful for our Community: Feedback system, eBay Rules, Shop safely, Sell safely.Who are your competitors? The web landscape is constantly moving, and in each of the markets where eBay operates worldwide we have ever new competitors. In the past many operators, like QXL in Europe, tried to replicate our business model; today, however, I would say that these so-called generalist competitors have lost some momentum, while those who specialize instead to serve the needs of specific product segments or client niches have better chances to win a share of the online market. Let us not forget, however, that for both us and our competitors operating on the Internet, the challenge is not so much to steal market share points from each other within current volumes, but rather to create conditions so that the ecommerce market continues healthy growth; in Italy there is room to do much more. I am convinced that converting more Italians to ecommerce means putting great opportunities at consumers’ disposal and helping to modernize the country, and all this can only result in larger market size, economies of scale for all players operating there, and therefore new benefits for consumers.What does eBay offer more than competitors in Italy, why should we prefer you? To buyers, we offer better choice and more opportunities to find what they are looking for: there are over 1 million items for sale at any moment on the Italian site alone, not counting the possibility to also search among those for sale on eBay across the rest of Europe and the world. To sellers, instead, we offer the widest audience of buyers on the web, since eBay is by far the most visited ecommerce site in Italy, with over 6 million unique visitors per month (according to Nielsen NetRatings): those who sell on eBay showcase their items 24/7 in the most frequented storefront in Italy.How did last year go and what are your future goals? We are very satisfied with the results achieved in 2005, a year in which Italy was among the countries with the highest growth rates in the eBay universe. The goal for the future is to continue growing the ecommerce market in Italy, also through ever greater synergies with the other two companies of the eBay group that are themselves growing very rapidly: PayPal, for secure payments online, and Skype, for communication via the Internet.
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