eBay - ESDS

About the eBay research
Non-technical summary: 'Virtually second-hand: Internet auction
sites as spaces of knowledge performance'
Internet auction sites have revolutionised the way we browse, shop for and sell secondhand, antique and collectible items. However, they also provide new ways and new spaces
to display identities, knowledges and 'knowingness,' particularly in relation to artefacts.
These include choice of user names(e.g. 'Delgirl'), the creation of 'about me' pages, buying
and selling behaviour, and the method of constructing item pages - from the actual text
used to photographic practices (i.e. the way the photos are taken). This project is a case
study of one such Internet auction site, eBay, and it is chosen for its dominance in the
Internet auction sector. eBay, the world's largest personal online trading community, was
initially set up in 1995 with collectors in mind, to enable easier access to collectibles
through the Internet. eBay is fast becoming an e-commerce mainstay and household name
on par or exceeding the likes of Amazon or Lastminute.com, with 15.8 million users worldwide in mid-2000. But it differs substantially from almost every other 'virtual store' or ecommerce site in carrying a stock of mostly second-hand items, which are described,
photographed and loaded on to a database by thousands of individual sellers themselves.
Very contrasting consumer and collecting knowledges are brought to bear on such items
than for mainstream new goods e-tailing. It is also a highly unusual site in the way that
'communities' are enabled and identities are done through eBay's own community spaces mediated by objects in buying, selling and browsing practices. Yet eBay remains largely
unexplored by the academic literature, particularly in terms of the key issues it raises
around knowledge, identity, community and collecting practices in an e-society, which the
proposed research seeks to redress. But understanding these issues in general and online
behaviour related to eBay provides critical insights not only for academic user groups but
also for non-academic users. Indeed, the most important general aim of this project is to
provide useful data and analysis for a wide variety of non-academic users from the
commercial to the policy community, in a way which will contribute to the economic
competitiveness of the UK.
Taking the commercial community first, the research aims to produce knowledge and
analysis of e-commerce practices that would reduce the risks of failure in setting up or
modifying e-commerce sites. This research project aims to offer a degree of insight into
how users experience, form and express identities and knowledges in relation to ecommerce, through the case study of eBay. This is likely to highlight 'best practice' in
constructing sites and areas where there is room for improvement. Knowing how to make
sites as 'sticky' as possible, so that users engage for considerable amounts of time, is an
important way of minimising some of the greatest risks faced by e-commerce sites.
Research into an online trading community such as eBay also aims to contribute salient
material on user experiences, which may lead to the alteration of businesses practices for
companies responsible for the structures and distribution systems of e-commerce particularly those who deal in the distribution of goods and money, whose work practices
are likely to be radically altered by the Internet. Indeed the traditional upholders of these
systems such as the Royal Mail or the high street banks, are likely to be under significant
threat from new competitors who can quickly adapt to this new business environment.
The project's focus on online trading also aims to contribute information relevant to the
policy community - for both government and voluntary sector organisations. This includes
insights into the possibilities of auction sites to provide self-employment (as sellers of
second-hand or collectible items) for those who need flexible working practices or those in
disadvantaged communities. There are also consumer issues which may require new
legislation or guidelines in an Internet era. These concern, for example, the potential missselling of goods through such a portal and questions of redress, as well as the growing
problem of fraudulent behaviour over the Internet.
The production of this data and information is built on a number of specific research aims,
to be carried out through an innovative qualitative methods mix. The proposed research
seeks to broadly examine the growth of the 'eBay phenomenon' in the UK and its role in
enabling virtual 'communities' - where knowledge and its display and manipulation is often
centrally important. In particular, it firstly aims to explore the relationship between
buying, selling and participation in the wider eBay community and the expression (and
constitution) of identities and 'knowingness.' Indeed, the exploration of how identities are
'done' through the site is a key concern of the project. eBay's success is perhaps partly a
result of providing a mechanism that users fill with content - this enables them to feel
'owners' of the content and express their identities - which requires investigation. eBay and
sites like it provide new and very public ways of expressing identity and knowledge - such
as via the textual, photographic and graphical content of self-constructed item pages which will also be explored. These explorations will take place through a variety of
research activities and methods. Initial research into eBay will begin through observation
rather than participation - to learn the social 'rules' and background required to participate.
Observation will take place in relation to a number of specific UK online collecting
communities (as defined by selling and buying in particular eBay categories), partly chosen
in relation to the project staff's own collecting interests and the availability of comparative
offline collecting communities. This 'lead in' period of initial observation will last for one
month, enabling the identification of key buyers and sellers in these collecting communities
- as denoted by their volume of and approach to buying and selling. 30 key buyers and
sellers in those communities will be contacted to establish whether they would like to
participate in the study. These participants will be asked to fill in diaries of their eBay
experiences. Experience diaries will then be followed up with interviewing by e-mail, which
would highlight the issues raised in the experience diaries and the critical issues
surrounding knowledge, identity and community revealed during the initial observation
period. The researchers will also participate in eBay as buyers and sellers of collectibles
themselves, in order to gain information on the 'eBay experience' from all perspectives, and
an additional 10 buyers or sellers will be recruited for interview through this approach.
However, recruitment will not only take place through the site itself, which would tend to
skew participants towards those who use the site frequently (and, therefore, perhaps have
particular views or approaches to issues of identity, knowledge and community) but also
through an offline context - a science and technology park and a university. This science
park and university are likely to provide a pool of computer literate individuals who
potentially use eBay on a number of levels from frequent usage to just looking or 'lurking.'
Focus group interviews will be held offline with these individuals.
The project secondly aims to examine the impact of eBay on collecting and the display of
collecting knowledges: concentrating on how pre-existing collecting practices have changed
in an e-society. This aim seeks to contrast the initial project aim which focuses on how an
e-society has provided new ways to buy and sell collectibles with whether, how and why
the Internet is changing existing collecting behaviours. This is an important methodological
approach and relatively unusual in relation to the approaches of traditional information
technology research, which has tended to concentrate on the Internet and radically new
behaviours related to its usage, rather than how and if it impinges on existing behaviour.
There has been little academic research on how collecting practices have been affected by
the Internet. This research aim will be explored through observation and interviewing of an
offline collecting community - the vintage radio community - as accessed through their
regular series of face-to-face events.
Finally, the project seeks to explicitly examine eBay's sense of 'community,' the
composition of that community and the role of knowledge in forming communities where
things or objects are potentially a critical mediator. What sort of 'communities' are enabled
by such sites and how does the fact that buying and selling constitutes the core activity of
the site, influence the form of community present there? Such 'virtual' communities remain
largely unexplored by research, particularly those that are formed in relation to commerce.
These 'communities' will be examined through observation of eBay's designated 'community'
spaces (such as the UK Board and Category Chat), as well as specific questions as part of
the interviewing of key buyers and sellers, group interviews and discussions with recruits
from researcher buying and selling, as noted above. E-commerce communities are
important social spaces to understand because they represent new ways in which people
are interacting and forming identities through buying and selling in general (and the
specific nature of what is being bought and sold), and this has implications for how ecommerce companies construct their websites.
In focusing on eBay as a case study representing the Internet auction industry, it is
envisaged that the project will develop key insights at a user level, not only for other
Internet sites who sell second-hand and collectible goods, but for the e-commerce industry
generally and its supporting infrastructure as a whole.
How will my contribution be used?
Focus group material is recorded and then transcribed into a text document by either Anna
or Becky. These are then analysed, drawing out key themes. Key themes, similarities and
differences are then explored across focus groups. Anonymity is preserved by removing real
names and using pseudonyms. Other identifying details are also removed or made more
generic - such as where you live or other factors which may hint at your identity. Rest
assured that your 'online' identity will be kept separate from your 'offline' identity.
Material from our research, including our focus groups, will be worked into conference
presentations and papers, as well as journal articles. We also hope to have an end of
project conference. There will additionally be outputs to non-academic user groups, as
mentioned above. This will include workshops and reports to user groups such as the Royal
Mail, government and voluntary organisations.
At the end of the project, in approximately 20 months' time, we will then deposit our data
with QUALIDATA - who aim to preserve qualitative data, principally for reuse. We will
submit the material in Word format in a highly categorised form, along with details about
the project which would enable reuse. Reuse and access to data is strictly regulated by
QUALIDATA.
We will regularly update our project website to show how the data is being disseminated.
To see more about the eBay project, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/
Type (case sensitive):
eBayuser
krov6MOSL
To see more about QUALIDATA, see:
http://www.esds.ac.uk/qualidata/about/introduction.asp
ABOUT CONSENT TO USE INFORMATION, GIVEN IN THE
FOCUS GROUP
Name of Research Project: Virtually second-hand: Internet auction sites as spaces of
knowledge performance
Research Institution: University of Essex
Contact telephone number: 01473 632240
Explanation:
Consent is necessary in order to protect your rights in the research process, and has
become best practice for qualitative research. It is also necessary in order for us to deposit
our material with QUALIDATA - who preserve qualitative data and make it available to other
researchers for reuse. Depositing our data with QUALIDATA is a stipulation of our project
award.
Information:
Your contribution will be kept safely and securely with access only to those with the
permission of the researcher.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting the researcher.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Thank you for participating in our eBay focus groups and letting us collect such interesting
and new data. If you have any questions or issues, please e-mail us on the addresses below.
Best wishes,
Becky & Anna
Rebecca Ellis: [email protected]
Anna Haywood: [email protected]
About the eBay research
'Virtually second-hand: Internet auction sites as spaces of
knowledge performance'
Internet auction sites have revolutionised the way we look at, shop for and sell secondhand, antique and collectible items. However, they also provide new ways and new spaces
to display who we are and what we know. These include choice of user names (e.g.
'Delgirl'), the creation of 'about me' pages, and buying and selling behaviour. This project is
a case study of eBay. eBay, the world's largest personal online trading community, was
initially set up in 1995 with collectors in mind, to enable easier access to collectibles
through the Internet. eBay is fast becoming a household name greater than Amazon or
Lastminute.com, with 15.8 million users world-wide in mid-2000. Yet eBay remains largely
unexplored by academics, particularly in terms of the key issues it raises around
knowledge, identity, community and collecting.
The research seeks to broadly examine the growth of eBay in the UK and its role in enabling
online 'communities.' In particular, it firstly aims to explore the relationship between
buying, selling and participation in the wider eBay community and identities. The project
secondly aims to examine the impact of eBay on collecting: concentrating on how collecting
has been changed by it. Finally, the project seeks to examine eBay's sense of 'community,'
and the make up of that community. As a young person using eBay, we are particularly
interested in whether you feel part of a community - given that you have to use someone
else's user name and password and get them to pay for you.
How will my interview be used?
Interview material is recorded and then transcribed into a text document by either Anna or
Becky. These are then analysed, drawing out key themes. Key themes, similarities and
differences are then explored across interviews. We make you anonymous - we take out
your real names and create different ones instead. Other identifying details are also
removed - such as where you live or other factors which may hint at who you are.
Material from our research, including our interviews, will be worked into conference
presentations and papers, as well as journal articles. We also hope to have an end of
project conference. There will additionally be outputs to other groups. This will include
workshops and reports to user groups such as the Royal Mail, government and voluntary
organisations. At the end of the project, in approximately 20 months' time, we will then
deposit our data with QUALIDATA - who aim to preserve qualitative (interview) data,
principally for reuse. We will submit the material in Word format in a highly categorised
form, along with details about the project which would enable reuse. Reuse and access to
data is strictly regulated by QUALIDATA.
We will regularly update our project website to show how the data is being used.
To see more about the eBay project, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/
Type (case sensitive):
eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
ABOUT CONSENT TO USE INFORMATION, GIVEN IN THE
INTERVIEW
Name of Research Project: Virtually second-hand: Internet auction sites as spaces of
knowledge performance
Research Institution: University of Essex
Contact telephone number: 01473 632240
Explanation:
Consent is necessary in order to protect your rights in the research process, and has
become best practice for qualitative research. It is also necessary in order for us to deposit
our material with QUALIDATA - who preserve qualitative data and make it available to other
researchers for reuse. Depositing our data with QUALIDATA is a stipulation of our project
award.
Information:
Your contribution will be kept safely and securely with access only to those with the
permission of the researcher.
You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting the researcher.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Thank you for participating in our eBay focus groups and letting us collect such interesting
and new data. If you have any questions or issues, please e-mail us on the addresses below.
Best wishes,
Becky & Anna
Rebecca Ellis: [email protected]
Anna Haywood: [email protected]
Tel: 01473 632240
Data collection for QUALIDATA - focus groups/ family interview
Participant's
name
DOB
Sex
Ethnicity
and
nationality
Occupation
I give my consent for
my interview to be used
for research purposes
(signature)
Data Index
Proje
ct
activi
ty no
Method
used
Unique
identifier
Date
collected
Data
format
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
4
Focus group
Focus group
Focus group
Focus group
Focus group
Focus group
Focus group
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Questionnaire
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
2-1-2704
2-2-1205
2-3-1905
2-4-2105
2-5-2805
2-6-0306
2-7-1706
3-1-2111
3-2-0512
3-3-1710
3-4-2212
3-5-2410
3-6-0512
3-7-2111
3-8-2402
3-9-2402
3-10-3009
3-11-2002
3-12-0601
3-13-1211
3-14-0411
3-15-2301
3-16-2011
3-17-2310
3-18-0311
3-19-1305
3-20-0711
3-21-2504
4-1-1703
27/04/2004
12/05/2004
19/05/2004
21/05/2004
28/05/2004
3/06/2004
17/06/2004
21/11/2004
05/12/2004
17/10/2004
22/12/2004
24/10/2004
05/12/2004
21/11/2004
24/02/2005
24/02/2005
30/09/2004
20/02/2005
06/01/2005
12/11/2004
04/11/2004
23/01/2005
20/11/2004
23/10/2004
03/11/2004
13/05/2005
07/11/2004
25/04/2005
17/03/2004
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
MS
4-2-0807
8/07/2004
MS WORD
4-3-0807
8/07/2004
MS WORD
4-4-1207
12/07/2004
MS WORD
4-5-1307
13/07/2004
MS WORD
4-6-1407
14/07/2004
MS WORD
4
4
4
4
4
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
WORD
File name
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
4-7-1507
15/07/2004
MS WORD
4-8-1507
15/07/2004
MS WORD
4-9-1907
19/07/2004
MS WORD
4-10-2207
22/07/2004
MS WORD
4-11-2207
22/07/2004
MS WORD
4-12-1909
19/09/2004
MS WORD
4-13-0510
05/10/2004
MS WORD
4-14-0610
06/10/2004
MS WORD
4-15-0710
07/10/2004
MS WORD
4-16-0810
08/10/2004
MS WORD
4-17-1111
11/11/2004
MS WORD
4-18-2102
21/02/2004
MS WORD
5-1-2109
21/09/2004
MS WORD
5-2-0510
5/10/04
MS WORD
5-3-0710
7/10/04
MS WORD
5-4-1110
11/10/2004
MS WORD
5-5-1210
12/10/2004
MS WORD
5-6-1810
18/10/2004
MS WORD
5-7-0811
8/11/2004
MS WORD
5-8-1011
10/11/2004
MS WORD
5-9-1511
15/11/2004
MS WORD
5-10-1503
15/3/2005
MS WORD
5-11-1603
16/3/2005
MS WORD
5
6
7
7
7
7
8
8
9
10
10
11
11
interview
Telephone
interview
Ethnographic
diary
Experience
diaries
Experience
diaries
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Face-to-face
interview
Telephone
interview
Face-to-face
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
Telephone
interview
5-12-1603
16/3/2005
MS WORD
6-1-0610
06/10/2005
MS WORD
7-1-1807
18/07/2005
MS WORD
7-2-2507
25/07/2005
MS WORD
7-3-2809
28/09/2005
MS WORD
7-4-2809
28/09/2005
MS WORD
8-1-2406
24/06/2005
MS WORD
8-2-2406
24/06/2005
MS WORD
9-1-2605
26/05/2005
MS WORD
10-1-2607
26/07/2005
MS WORD
10-2-0908
09/08/2005
MS WORD
11-1-2007
20/07/2005
MS WORD
11-2-2807
28/07/2005
MS WORD
Activity 1:
eBay online observation (no deposit possible - restrictions through eBay screenshot agreement).
Activity 2:
focus group sessions
Activity 3:
becoming a buyer and seller on the eBay site
Activity 4:
investigation of an ‘offline’ collecting community, the vintage radio community
Activity 5:
investigation of an ‘offline’ collecting community, the stamp and first day cover community
Activity 6:
ethnographic diary of the vintage radio community
Activity 7:
experience diaries and follow-up interviews
Activity 8:
charity shop interviews
Activity 9:
family/ young eBay users interview
Activity 10:
interviews with eBay drop shops
Activity 11:
interviews with self-employed eBayers
RES‐000‐23‐0433 Full Report of Research Activities and Results “Virtually second‐hand: Internet auction sites as spaces of knowledge performance” Award no: RES‐000‐23‐0433 Dr R. M. Ellis (RME) and Ms A. J. Haywood (AJH) 20th April 2006 1. Background One of the principle motivations behind our initial project proposal was a ‘blind spot’ related to the academic literature on eBay, the Internet auction site. The early literature on eBay tended to concentrate on discrete topic areas such as trust and reputation (e.g. Calkins, 2001; Dewan and Hsu, 2001; Standifird, 2001; Resnick et al., 2002), as academics were fascinated by eBay’s self‐regulating market. eBay also presented Economists with a market in which to conduct field experiments and quickly recover the data (Katkar and Lucking‐Reiley, 2000). The ‘softer’ and ostensibly less marketised social and cultural issues1 surrounding eBay have often received more attention in the popular media than from academia (cf. Herschlag and Zwick, 2002; Rafaeli and Noy, 2002). Key issues eBay raises around knowledge, identity, community and collecting practices were neglected in the literature at the time of the proposal. Notable exceptions to this included Boyd (2000) who asked if eBay’s communities were just ‘communities of commerce’ and Gurak (2001) who contended that eBay’s sense of community was likely to be fragmented in comparison to offline equivalents. Robinson and Halle (2002) also examined the now notorious case of a painting which appeared to be an original by the famous artist Richard Diebenkorn, which illustrated the importance of eBay as a space of knowledge performance, which was a central thread of our research. The eBay seller in Robinson and Halle’s paper constructed his item description to convey an apparent “lack of sophistication” (Robinson and Halle, 2002: 367) and ‘unknowingness’, and others hoped to take advantage of his ‘naivety’ by using their expert knowledges to grab a bargain. In parallel with our research and after nearly a decade of eBay scholarship2 in a fast moving field, we begin to see research relating more strongly to the multiple ways eBay matters to its browsers, buyers and sellers and its impact on consumer and collecting culture ‐ which has culminated in Hillis, K. et al.’s (eds) (2006) Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting and Desire,3 which includes our own paper on eBay’s impact on collecting practices (see ‘Outputs’); and the papers in our own self‐organised Cultures of eBay conference (see ‘Activities’). The project has also built on relevant ESRC‐funded research and related research strands. ‘Virtually second‐hand’ is situated in debates about ‘the virtual’ 1
Our research also acknowledges Dant’s (2000) critique of consumption, to look beyond the social features of the market towards those undetermined by the ‘cash nexus’ (e.g. inheritance, misappropriation).
2
With eBay.com’s creation in 1995.
3
To be publicly released just after the writing of this end of award report. 1 RES‐000‐23‐0433 and the ESRC’s Virtual Society? Research programme. Woolgar (2002) has discussed the idea of a ‘virtual society’ which is based on various epithetized visions of technologically transformed futures. Lunt’s (N.D.) ‘virtual consumer’, as part of the programme, notes the importance of e‐commerce for mundane shopping; whilst auction sites were enjoyed as ‘cool’ and fun, partly through the ‘voyeuristic’ examination of others’ buying/ selling habits. Woolgar states five ‘rules’ of virtuality, three of which are relevant to our project – firstly that different aspects of local social context are important for the reception and use of electronic technologies. This was very much apparent with the different impact on eBay amongst stamp/ first day cover collectors and vintage radio collectors in our study. Secondly, Woolgar posits that virtual technologies often supplement rather than substitute for real activities. Whilst the e‐collecting research in our project has shown substitution to the virtual, many collectors prefer to collect both online and offline to maximise the benefits of both domains. Thirdly, Woolgar states the use of ‘virtual’ technologies can stimulate more ‘real’ activity. We acknowledge online activity can often promote more offline activity – radio collectors using an online discussion forum would then meet up at physical events. Shields (2003) has also examined ‘the virtual’, and particularly important here is his section on ‘computer as filter’. He argues that whilst computer‐
based media encode ‘reality’, there is also autonomy from the concrete in that digital virtuality is dependent on technology. ‘Reality’ may also be forgotten, lost or supplanted with editing or cropping, and some complex eBay frauds use this distinction – such as selling an empty box. ‘Virtually second‐hand’ also develops ESRC‐funded and related research on second‐hand/ shopping arenas. Our project proposal positioned itself as a theoretical shift. In a similar way that the ‘alternative consumption space’ literature criticised consumption research in Human Geography and beyond for its ‘spatial fix’ on new goods purchase in the high street and mall (vid. Gregson and Crewe, 1994), so this proposal, in turn, criticises the alternative consumption space literature for its ‘absences’ surrounding eBay in published work (such as Gregson and Crewe, 2003) ‐ particularly with eBay’s impact on ridding practices (another ridding route, and one which is ‘hollowing out’ charity donations) and on being able to gift with ‘second‐
hand’ items (contra Gregson and Crewe, 2003) from eBay. We proposed eBay as an ‘alternative consumption space of e‐commerce’, which concurred with Zukin’s later commentary on the site. Zukin initially positions eBay as an alternative consumption space, and suggests that the ‘genius’ of eBay is to: “take us outside the box of shopping mall conformity” (Zukin, 2004: 244). She describes it as having no fixed prices, and as a place of serendipity which recreates a: “narrative of accident, discovery and exploration” (Zukin, 2004: 244), which re‐romanticises shopping. This makes eBay ripe for collecting and the performance of collecting practices and rituals, and collectables was the initial market eBay moved into. Yet our research shows eBay can be problematic for more ritualistic aspects of consumption and collecting. Although there have been calls for more research on consumers in virtual worlds and the movement of work such as Belk’s (1991) ‘Consumer Behaviour Odyssey’ into virtual domains (Catterall and Maclaran, 2001), relatively little published academic literature surprisingly exists on the impact of the Internet and eBay in terms of collecting. Zukin also describes eBay as the antithesis to the: “world of standardized, branded goods”. And yet Zukin suggests eBay was expanded away 2 RES‐000‐23‐0433 from an ‘alternative’ “global garage sale” and “secondary collectables market” (Zukin, 2004: 245) into selling everything, not just collectables, including some items at fixed price. Leyshon et al. define the alternative as how: “people create and implement ways of practising economic life shaped and directed through sets of social relations differentiated from – and in some cases opposed to – mainstream relations” (Leyshon, Lee and Williams, 2003: x). Our research, in parallel with Zukin, also finds that eBay’s alternative/ mainstream boundaries are highly permeable and increasingly so over time, as it reconstitutes itself into selling more new goods at fixed prices, which impacts on the consumer knowledges used there and notions of an eBay community. The proposal also positioned itself against the majority of the e‐commerce literature, with its focus mainly on new goods e‐commerce sites (e.g. Currah, 2002; Murphy, 2002; Murphy, 2003a; Murphy, 2003b) and virtual malls (Currah, 2003), yet this is not to deny its relevance. Business practice is pulling e‐commerce research into second‐hand arenas – for example, while Dodge (2001) considers Amazon’s new books selling, he follows their initial diversification into second‐hand arenas of zShops and auctions. The fact that the literature which has looked at the economic impact of the Internet has examined the disintermediation and reintermediation of existing value chains as a key e‐commerce narrative (Crewe, 2003) also means that there has been an examination of ‘alternative’ not just ‘mainstream’ economies – such as the musical gift economy (Leyshon, 2003) and peer‐to‐peer piracy (Currah, 2004). The Geography e‐commerce literature is particularly important for our research in dispelling notions of the “weightless economy” (Quah, 1999), and reinstating the importance of logistics (Murphy, 2003a, 2003b) (for grounded commodities) and information infrastructure in redefining geographies through the exploitation of minute differences between places (Li et al., 2001). Leyshon et al.’s (2004) ESRC research ‘Putting electronic commerce in its place’ is important relevant previous research against which to situate the eBay project. Leyshon et al. (2004) relevantly examine consumer knowledges and the way e‐commerce is impacting upon consumer‐firm relations. This includes consumer knowledges broadening and deepening, with fast access to market knowledge, and newly emergent consumption dispositions. Consumption is also said to be taking place in relation to communities (discussion boards, fan sites), while the ‘screen aesthetic’ is said to be significant in consumption change. Finally, consumers are noted to be increasingly motivated by an intense consumption experience (auctions, tracking, bidding, highs and lows). Leyshon’s project was additionally carried out soon after the dot com bust, when the hyperbolic ideas and practices of e‐commerce began to work in more mundane ways (Leyshon et al. 2003), but involved the pervasive circumvention of key nodes in traditional value chains (French et al., 2004) by new intermediaries (disintermediation). They acknowledge (ibid.) a full account of e‐commerce’s consequences is premature. The eBay project investigates the 2004‐2005 time period, and provides a further exploration into the maturation of e‐commerce. Zook sees eBay as a dominant player that has come out of the boom and: “provided new ways in which products are bought and sold” (Zook, 2005: 142). However, our study seems to suggest a darkening of e‐commerce futures for companies such as eBay who have seen such prolific growth. eBay has allowed the disintermediation of traditional ‘middle men’ and often a way to circumvent high street prices. However, there is 3 RES‐000‐23‐0433 evidence from the ‘professional’ self‐employed eBayers that they wish to ‘disintermediate’ eBay and set up a more stable ‘multi‐channel’ strategy (Currah, 2002) of using eBay (for signposting and presence) and their own fixed price websites, because of perceived high eBay fees and increasing competition. On the consumer side, there is evidence of the satiation of collecting desires for early adopters and therefore gaining less pleasure from eBay, also reflected in perceived lower prices for less rare or prized items. 2. Objectives From ‘Aims and objectives’ section of proposal. Generic aim: to understand if and how Internet auction sites provide new ways and new spaces to perform and display knowledges and ‘knowingness’, particularly in relation to material culture and wider site‐specific ‘communities’. To be understood through the case study of eBay.co.uk. Objectives (obj): 1. An exploration of mediated social identities in relation to buying, selling and browsing practices and knowledge display and performance. 2. To examine the impact of eBay on collecting and the performance of collecting knowledges, concentrating on how pre‐existing collecting practices have changed in an e‐society. 3. To understand eBay’s own sense of community in comparison to offline collecting communities – including the compositions of that community, its exclusions, and the role of knowledge in forming online communities when material culture is a potential critical mediator or nexus. 4. Contribute to an understanding of the very contrasting consumer and collecting knowledges that are brought to bear on an electronic ‘catalogue’ of mostly second‐
hand items, which differ substantially from the new items traditionally offered by mainstream e‐tailers. 5. To provide two unique datasets: (a) the use and experience of Internet auctions by buyers, sellers and browsers and (b) collecting in an e‐society. 6. To develop an innovative research methods mix, in order to provide a contribution to the online application of qualitative research methods. This would include recovering eBay ‘lurkers’ who have traditionally failed to matter in Internet ethnography (cf. Hine, 2000), who have no visible presence or identity, and the use of screen capturing with annotation in experience diaries. 4 RES‐000‐23‐0433 7. To make a theoretical contribution through the potential reformulation of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus in an e‐society. 8. To provide data and analysis useful to a wide variety of non‐academic users from the commercial to the policy community: (a) To produce knowledge and analysis of e‐commerce practices and the user experience that would help reduce the risks of failure in setting up or modifying e‐commerce sites. (b) To contribute insights to those responsible for the structures, systems architecture and distribution systems of e‐commerce: distribution of goods, distribution of money and Internet infrastructure. (c) To contribute information relevant to the policy community – for government and voluntary sector organisations, including insights into eBay self‐employment and consumer issues. 3. Methods and analysis As outlined in our original proposal, one of the objectives of the project (objective 6) was to develop an innovative research methods mix, as part of a contribution to offset the relatively limited systematic exploration of how the Internet may be incorporated into the practice of qualitative research (Mann and Stewart, 2000). This included the important recovery of ‘lurking’ behaviour and lurkers – for whom methodologies have rarely been adjusted for this potentially large group (cf. Nonnecke and Preece, 2000). Lurkers were to be recovered through recruitment and research of eBay through ‘offline’ environments. ‘Being innovative’ also involved an attempt to allow participants to indicate what matters to them in their eBay usage in not just discursive but also visual ways through screen capturing and annotation. Getting participants to carry out self‐directed experience diaries was also seen as a way of honing in on detailed usage and practice, rather than purely relying on some form of interviewing, which was likely to recover more generalised and remembered‐at‐a‐distance accounts. As such, and with a wide variety of research aims, the project contained a large number of research ‘activities’ or strands in order to gain a ‘holistic’ picture, which will be discussed below. Our research methodology was designed to uncover relevant data to our research objectives. The order and number of the research activities differ from the original proposal, due to project refinements and additions (see below) ‐ which aimed to better meet those objectives and be a reflexive research practice which responded to variable participant circumstances and unanticipated problems. The project was also re‐evaluated in light of reviewer’s comments, but maintained the original objectives. 5 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Research activity 1: observation of the eBay site The project began with a one month period of initial observation of the eBay site, in order to get a feel for users’ eBay practices across a number of categories, which would help inform the production of interview schedules for focus groups, collectors’ interviews, and objectives 1,3,4 and 8. Observation of both particular categories (see Table 1, Appendix) and eBay’s generalised community pages, continued during the rest of the project. A large table was initially constructed from eBay’s own structure (see Table 1), which contained categories likely to contain mostly second‐hand items, since this was the thrust of the project – in particular a selection of sub‐categories from the meta‐categories “Collectables” and “Art and Antiques”. This table produced hundreds of sub‐categories for observation, and so it was iteratively redefined throughout the project – partly as a result of eBay’s ever‐
changing categories, and partly through understanding categories that ‘mattered’ to users in the study. This observation of the eBay site throughout the project was later to inform research activity 6 – identifying key buyers and sellers to undertake experience diaries. Observations were recorded in a Word document ‘observation diary’. The diary recording of the ‘primary source’ material took the form of saved ‘archive’ html eBay pages, the copy and pasting of important text into the diary, and screen capturing through the software tool ‘SnagIt’. The diary aimed to capture a number of elements. These included details of ‘key’ buyers and sellers as defined through having an ‘interesting’ approach to buying or selling or a high volume – recording their eBay user names, ‘About Me’ (biographical) pages or eBay shop pages. It also noted any category‐specific approach to item descriptions or social construction of the objects. Finally, the diary aimed to assess whether categories were underpinned by ‘vibrant’ collecting communities of interest – judged by collecting‐
specific user ids (e.g. crewe_bottles) and a ‘feel’ from the number of items listed and number of bids for them. Research activity 2: focus group sessions Focus group recruitment occurred using two offline localities, firstly a large science park in Suffolk, UK and secondly at the University of Essex. The science park was noted in the original proposal as providing a group of people more likely to use eBay because of a high percentage of Internet access at work and home. The science park recruitment occurred through both utilising the research team’s social network there plus further ‘snowballing’, an appeal on BT intranet pages (rather than flyers) and an e‐mail to research‐oriented divisions on the site. Recruitment through a social network was important in order to ensure the definite capturing of eBay ‘low investors’ (cf. Gregson and Crewe, 2003) to meet objective 6 ‐ ‘non‐registered browsers’ (NRBs) and ‘lurkers’ in the study. The focus groups captured these low investors’ motivations as ‘lurkers’ (registered but not bidding or selling) and NRBs. Non‐registered browsing often involves ‘just looking’ (cf. Bowlby, 1985) without having an eBay registration, with either a sense of browsing but not wanting to spend money or commit to the item, being a ‘reluctant’ shopper, or using eBay for price comparison. Short‐term lurking merges with wider browsing practices. The University of Essex was used as an additional site for recruitment as workers or 6 RES‐000‐23‐0433 students there were also more likely to have Internet access at work or home, and they may have different ‘subjectivities’ to the science park workers – which would present a more holistic picture of eBay use, including students on a limited budget. A recruitment e‐mail was sent to all staff, all undergraduate students and all postgraduates. 4 focus groups were carried out at the science park and 3 at the university (see Appendix, Table 2), with a total of 34 participants from seven focus groups. The number of participants averaged 4/5 rather than the 5/6 planned due to ‘drop outs’ very close to the date of the focus groups, but 7 focus groups were held rather than the proposed 6. A laptop computer was brought to the sessions with examples of eBay screen captures as potential prompts for discussion ‐ however, discussions were intense and never floundered on a lack of understanding, so it was not used. Discussions centred around a set of semi‐structured interview questions, and all were moderated by RME and AJH. The focus groups comprised both ‘round robin’ questions where all participants answered in turn, and then ‘free participation’ sections where people answered if desired. Questions were formulated to contribute to objectives 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Focus groups all took place at either the science park or the University of Essex for ease of access to participants, and were tape recorded. Research activity 3: researchers as buyers and sellers It was decided to bring forward the researchers as buyers and sellers activity and delay the experience diaries until later in the project, as it became clear that more site observation (running in parallel with the other research activities) was needed to identify key buyers and sellers. Research activity 3 aimed to access another, different, subset of people as well as have a focus on the object as it moved through the exchange process. It was aimed to take a “cultural biography of things” (Kopytoff, 1986) approach, with a particular concern as to where items had been acquired (e.g. inheritance, misappropriation, bought for resale), ridding practices and post‐
purchase rituals (cf. Gregson and Crewe, 2003). This occurred for a wide variety of items that the researchers were buying and selling as part of their ordinary eBay practice (see Appendix, Table 3). All the items bought or sold were second‐hand, with RME’s items being mostly radio, glass or Art Deco related; whilst AJH’s items were mostly clothes, shoes or modern ephemera (DVDs, magazines). 21 participants (9 buyers, 12 sellers), 11 more than planned, completed questionnaires and e‐mail data was added where relevant. It was decided to use questionnaires in the form of RTF e‐mail attachments rather than asynchronous interviewing by e‐mail to allow those with only web‐based e‐mail accounts to complete them offline. Both techniques involve a similar process of typing free text underneath the researcher’s question. 7 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Research activity 4: exploring the ‘offline’ vintage radio collecting community Research activity 4 aimed to obtain data on all the specific objectives, but particularly to understand the impact of eBay on a pre‐existing collecting community which has traditionally collected offline (obj2 and 5(b)), as a case study. RME began participant observation on 4/5/03 to provide background to the project proposal. Participant observation continued until 2/10/2005, with regular attendance at all day swapmeets/ auction events at: Cowbit, Lincolnshire (5 attendances = x5); Harpenden, Herts (x5); the National Vintage Communication Fair, Birmingham (x5); Colchester rally (x2) and Ipswich rally (x1). At these events, RME was both a stallholder’s assistant and a buyer/observer, which enabled data gathering on eBay narratives from surrounding stall holders, purchasers of stall items and during periods of ‘walking round’. Participant observation entries were recorded in a diary, and were written up as soon as possible after they happened to retain accuracy. The entries noted overheard conversations and anecdotes about eBay or reluctance to use it. ‘Participation’ also involved talking to collectors about eBay, at their prompting. This came from those collectors in RME’s immediate ‘social circle’ who knew about the research, as well as those who had been formally interviewed by RME and kept in contact at meetings. Participant observation at swapmeets also included recruiting collectors for semi‐
structured interviews. At the outset, it was envisaged these would be short interviews taking place during swapmeets. However, it became apparent that swapmeets were too noisy and hectic for interviewing. As the collectors were very widely geographically distributed, and project time and finances could not factor in extensive travel, it was decided to use telephone interviewing with semi‐structured interview schedules. Telephone interviews have been shown to yield similar information to face‐to‐face interviewing, while being cost‐efficient and allowing a wider variety of respondents to be included (Sturges and Hanrahan, 2004). Recruitment also occurred through: (a) an article on the research in the British Vintage Wireless Society (BVWS) Bulletin, (b) an e‐mail to BVWS committee members and (c) an appeal on the UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration online discussion forum. Interviews were completed with 18 radio and vintage audio collectors (see Appendix, Table 4), and interviews lasted between 1 and 2 ¼ hours. Interviews were very wide‐ranging in content, not just looking at changed collecting practices with eBay (obj2) and providing a dataset (obj 5b), but also objectives 1,3,4,7 and 8. Interviews and questionnaires aimed to examine the offline and online behaviours of the same individuals. In order to provide a ‘bigger picture’, an appeal was also made on the discussion forum for collectors to complete short questionnaires, if they did not have time to be interviewed. Questionnaires covered the same areas, and 8 were completed – giving a total of 26 radio collectors. 8 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Research activity 5: interviews with the stamp/ cover collecting community After the initial award publicity, the project team were approached by the director of a stamp and first day cover (FDC) collectables dealer/manufacturer, Ellie Buckingham of Internet Stamps. The name ‘Internet stamps’ was an attempt by this ‘traditional’ player in the market to assume the role of digital intermediary, when the business had previously operated through a physical shop and mail order business. Internet Stamps was now both selling through eBay and had its own web page, and this posed questions for their business strategy which relied on customer research for its answers. The contact by Internet Stamps provided an opportunity to access and gather data (obj 5(b)) on another collecting/ group community, to compare and contrast with the vintage radio community case study in terms of eBay’s impact on collecting practices (obj2), as well as gather data on all specific objectives. The Internet is described as “a revolution in philately” (de Vries, 2001), and the materiality of stamps and covers which travel inexpensively around the globe is a large factor in this ‘revolution’. In comparison, radio and audio items are heavy and cumbersome, which affects eBay’s impact. Internet Stamps would also provide a case study of the impact of eBay on a ‘traditional’ (offline) intermediary, which is important to the policy community in terms of thinking through eBay’s opportunities and threats to employment and existing businesses (obj8). This work was extra to the original project proposal, and appeared to offer an additional very valuable perspective. It was agreed that key consumer research issues for Internet Stamps would be incorporated into a semi‐structured interview schedule modified from the radio collectors, in return for recruitment by them of stamp and FDC collectors. This occurred through an article written for Internet Stamps’ mail shots. 12 telephone interviews were completed with stamp and FDC collectors, lasting between 30 minutes and 2hrs 45 (see Appendix, Table 5), plus 3 questionnaires with collectors from US collectors, with whom telephone interviews would have been prohibitively expensive. Research activity 6: experience diaries – paper diaries, offline Word diaries or Blogs After the substantive part of site observation was completed (activity 1), key buyers and sellers identified in that process were approached to undertake self‐directed ‘experience’ diaries. Experience diaries aimed to be one ‘innovative’ method used in the project (obj 6). The original proposal initially stated that this would partly be achieved through annotated screen captures, followed by asynchronous interviewing by e‐mail, but this was highly problematic in practice. Screen capturing through software existing on most people’s computers used ‘screen print’, but this was inadequate for capturing most eBay pages which were more than one screen. Annotation of ‘screen print’ captures was also fiddly and technically difficult for anyone but the moderate/advanced PC user – involving copy/ paste into a Word document and the use of multiple text boxes. ‘SnagIt’ software would have offered a more appropriate solution for annotation and scrolling windows ‐ however, a pilot study with members of our social network showed a reluctance to download the trial version of the software because of the perceived risk (software from unknown 9 RES‐000‐23‐0433 source/ hassle involved), and because the software would eventually expire and then prompt for payment of a license. Instead, a variety of diary options were put in place – Blogs, paper diaries and Word diaries. During the period of the original proposal, we were unaware of Blogs (weblogs), but these seemed the perfect solution to the annotated screen capture problem and what ‘matters’ to people in terms of their own eBay usage ‐ including relevant web pages. Blogs would also allow us to see eBay usage in the context of everyday life and allowed for the insertion of images and hyperlinks, but there is a paucity of material on Blogs as a research tool (pace Suzuki, 2004). Matheson (2004) concurs with this view of Blogs as a vehicle for citation, seeing it as a form which depends on the selection of material, but which foregrounds the act of selecting as a situated knowledge ‐ producing meaning “within a notion of knowledge as a process and matter of connection”, an intertextual form (Matheson, 2004: 460). Paper diaries were suggested for those who liked the affordances of paper, and did not want to write on a computer; whilst Word diaries were offered to those who wanted to use a computer but write the diary offline, perhaps because they did not have Broadband. All participants could send relevant links using e‐mail and a cut and pasting of the URL (which they were advised how to do), or they could use eBay’s ‘send item to a friend’ link with a comment, noting the diary comment to which it should be attached. This aimed to be an innovative mix of online and offline strategies and reporting. We used eBay’s ‘ask seller a question’ facility or ‘contact member’ to recruit participants, and proved our identities by e‐mailing back with our University e‐mail addresses. It was anticipated that 30 key buyers and sellers would be contacted with a response rate of 20. In reality, we contacted 80 key buyers and sellers with a completion rate of 3 (4%) (see ‘Major Difficulties’ on main form). This had taken a considerable amount of time, particularly following up and setting up Blogs for ‘maybes’ who then did not respond to e‐mails. Two other participants agreed to do diaries (Word and paper) but did not complete them, despite many reminders. Sellers described themselves as being very ‘time poor’. Finding ‘key’ buyers was extremely problematic given their interaction with eBay as a website. Observation of categories infrequently indicated ‘key’ buyers – bidding for similar items within a category. When ‘key’ buyers were approached, they often declined participation, or withdrew from the study after they were sent the initial documents – again citing time pressures. To compensate for this very low response rate and an emphasis on Blogs by full‐time eBay sellers, the Suffolk science park’s intranet was again used to ask for volunteers. 8 participants completed an experience diary, bringing the total to 11 (see Appendix, Table 6). For future projects, the way forward might be to offer fairly generous ‘inconvenience payments’ for diary completion (which had not been budgeted for in this project), to compensate sellers for the loss of their working time (some enquired about payment) and buyers for the loss of their leisure time. Participants were asked to complete their experience diary over a 21‐day period – writing as much or as little as they wanted and with no stipulation on the number of entries – but with a particular emphasis on what mattered to them in their everyday eBay usage, eBay and everyday life, and issues of identity, knowledge and community (obj’s 1,3,4 and 8). Follow‐up interviews were carried out where diaries raised other questions, but not by asynchronous e‐mail. As one of our initial ESRC reviewers pointed out, responses by e‐mail are often unsatisfactory, and we felt 10 RES‐000‐23‐0433 responses to questionnaires so far in the study had often been brief, and could be no kind of further development on Blog entries. Instead, we again used telephone interviews to capture user’s discursive accounts, which lasted between 2 and 2 ½ hours. However, the experience diaries completed by the 8 science park participants were relatively scant in detail and sometimes involved purely a list of links to items they had bought or sold, with little surrounding text. They were ‘low investors’ (Gregson and Crewe, 2003) in writing about it and reflecting on eBay beyond the ‘fleeting engagement’ of buying and selling, and using eBay ‘as a tool’. Many of these diaries were ‘self explanatory’, requiring no follow‐up interviewing, and sometimes there was often not enough material to develop relevant lines of questioning without ‘leading’ participants on identities, knowledge and community and disrupting a sense of what ‘matters’ to them. However, their accounts did strongly contextualise eBay usage in everyday life – such as buying for work colleagues or using eBay to sell unwanted baby items to make space. With the two participants who had completed detailed Blogs and had follow‐up telephone interviews, it was found that both captured similar not different narrative accounts in these two techniques – there was no dichotomy between practice vs. more distant thematic discursive accounts from interviews. Everyday eBay practice, as recorded in Blogs, appeared to prompt thematic discussion, whereas in an interview situation, this is prompted by the researcher. Diaries proved to be an ‘innovative’ method, therefore, in self‐generating their own discussion points to reveal what ‘matters’ without being ‘led’. The detailed Blogs were particularly used for critical reflection (cf. Suzuki, 2004) on eBay practices, which continued in interviews – such as why participants are self‐employed eBayers, why they take a particular approach to selling – and as a ‘counselling session’ to get frustrations off their chest. They had a much higher ‘investment’ in eBay as full‐time sellers (rather than buyers), and critical reflection and ‘offloading’ was an important technique to be a ‘better’ seller and improve motivation. The research shows experience diaries are likely to give highly variable results, depending on what rewards accrue to the writer – whether beneficial critical reflection or monetary compensation. Research activity 7: interviews with participants using eBay to generate the majority of their earned income As part of objective 8, which seeks to contribute information on eBay self‐
employment, and to also consider business‐to‐business eBay trading, it was decided that although participants who earned the majority of their income from eBay had been interviewed during focus groups, radio and stamp/ FDC collectors’ interviews, and as part of follow‐ups to Blogs, that these should be supplemented with some additional interviews. 10 interviews in total were completed (see Appendix, Table 7), with recruitment from work colleagues’ social networks and approaching eBay drop shops found through eBay observation. eBay drop shops were also a relatively new phenomenon which were not part of the UK eBay scene at the time of our proposal, but are important when considering eBay’s new employment opportunities. 11 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Additional interviews: under‐18 eBay users and charity shops 3 additional interviews which were not part of the project proposal were also carried out (see Appendix, Table 8) to provide a fuller picture. The first involved a family interview including under‐18 eBay users (aged 13 and 10). Under‐18s are technically excluded from the site under eBay’s rules, and this interview was carried out as part of objective 3, to look at the eBay community and its exclusions. In particular, the young people’s eBay use was examined – whose user id they used, and how they were participating in the eBay ‘community’. They were recruited through the initial call for focus group participants. Secondly, two interviews were carried out with charity shop managers. It had become clear during focus groups that eBay had altered consumer knowledges (obj 4) and not just relied on them, in terms of the values achievable for second‐hand items on eBay. Second‐hand items were fetching ‘good money’ on eBay, and this meant that many people were selling their unwanted items on eBay, rather than giving to charity shops. The impact of eBay on charity shops was therefore the focus of interviews, as well as charity shops’ own ventures into eBay selling (one of the managers interviewed was the pioneer in charity shop eBay selling). Analysis: All taped recordings of interviews/focus groups were fully transcribed and printed out. To these were added questionnaires and experience diaries (all in electronic format). RME then ‘open coded’ (Strauss, 1987) the transcripts manually on paper in terms of important discursive themes and sub‐themes, as well as important data elements to consider (About Me pages, feedback etc), and established ways of talking about eBay (such as ‘profit stories’). This is used to produce provisional concepts that seem to fit the data which are later iteratively modified, and to open up the inquiry (Strauss, 1987). Due to the large amount of data and variety of data sources, it was decided to use a qualitative software package, Atlas Ti, in order to help manage the data and organise quotations. The data charting us as buyers and sellers (activity 3) was separated from the other data in a ‘new hermeneutic unit’ ‐ as this data was quite different in its content, but all other data was placed together, including questionnaires and the ethnographic diary of the vintage radio community to allow for triangulation and a holistic picture. Manual codings were then transferred to Atlas by highlighting relevant text and constructing a code name, and all previous manual coding was then reconsidered in light of reading and re‐reading through the whole dataset. Atlas allowed the uniformity of manual coding to be checked and corrected due to the availability of a ‘code list’ – which indicated codes which had been used so far. AJH double‐checked the integrity of the coding, suggesting more codes where necessary, and the renaming of some codes to better describe that part of the data. When coding was finished, RME and AJH then looked through a complete list of the codes constructed. Again, some codes were renamed or merged for better clarity. Atlas was then used to output all the quotations for various codes or sets of codes. 12 RES‐000‐23‐0433 4. Preliminary results The objectives were met successfully through the methodology charted in section 3, and this section outlines the project’s preliminary results in terms of each objective. Objective 1: An exploration of mediated social identities in relation to buying, selling and browsing practices and knowledge display and performance. The results reveal a highly complex picture in relation to eBay and mediated social identities. An understanding of eBay identities from the data suggest there is a complex mix between a performance of personal identities (where you live, your name, nicknames, car plates), social identities (e.g. gender, ethnicity, sexuality) and identities grounded in material culture and consumption (taste, discrimination, expertise, ‘knowingness’). Which aspect of identity comes to the fore tends to depend on whether you are a generalist (buying, selling or browsing a variety of new and second‐hand items); or whether you feel part of a wider ‘community of interest’ (see objective 3 results) – where consumption‐related and creative identities are more important. Some aspects of identity performed through eBay usage are very much taken‐for‐granted performances and part of people’s habitus (Bourdieu, 1984) which frames their item descriptions, whilst others are a highly managed and a reflexive presentation of self (Goffman, 1959). Key aspects of eBay to consider in relation to identity are: user ids, About Me pages and the construction and audience response to item descriptions. In terms of eBay user ids, the choice of user name is regarded as more important for sellers than buyers. eBay user ids form part of their ‘brand’, and professional eBay sellers were shown to be highly reflexive about their id and its appropriateness to what they were selling. They also tried to make their user ids memorable, and some eBayers had multiple ids – separating personal eBaying from business eBaying to better manage their brand. Some buyers operated distinctions against eBayers with what they saw as ‘uncreative’ user names (combinations of names and numbers), feeling this was indicative of the effort they might put into selling. Those who were part of a “community of interest” tended to place more emphasis on finding a ‘creative’ or unusual user name which aimed to communicate something about themselves and sometimes their collecting interests. Some eBayers reused their names from other Internet forums and online “communities of interest” (gaming, collecting, Usenet). Yet many people also desired a degree of anonymity from their user names, using them as a ‘mask’ (cf. Danet et al., 1997), eschewing any personal or indicative references. Sometimes this was a concern with being ‘tracked down’ by unwanted contacts from a combination of their buying interests, user name and location. On other occasions this involved commercial concerns – with people selling items with problems they wouldn’t sell face‐to‐face, and sellers not wanting dubiously acquired and identifiable rare commodities to be traced back to them. Identities grounded in buying and selling very specific items of material culture as part of a community of interest were often traceable identities for those ‘in the know’, which is quite different from notions of “identity play” (Turkle, 1995) typically associated with virtual identities. Yet “identity play” did go on amongst generalist 13 RES‐000‐23‐0433 eBayers who shared ‘household ids’ – they often enjoyed confusing their ‘audience’ about their gender (if different to that registered), and revelled in the confused inferences possible from their list of purchases ‐ from the perspective of gendered purchasing patterns (e.g. a Care Bear and a motorbike engine). Inferences were made about people on the basis of the limited information posted on eBay, which encouraged anonymity – results revealed a female gender exposed through user ids or e‐mail addresses was regarded as a disadvantage for selling items involving technical knowledges. The research also showed, for well‐known figures within “communities of interest”, user ids create problems in other ways. If people know the person behind the user name is a respected dealer with ‘the knowledge’, then the fact that they are seen to bid on an item may ‘legitimate’ it, and lead to a higher price. Conversely, well‐known figures were also reported to use their ids to ‘intimidate’ bidders – who would assume they had greater buying power. Well known figures often had multiple user ids, including anonymous ones – using some to denote their ‘knowingness’ and others to get the bargain. Disidentification with eBay behaviour also occurred – people were embarrassed that they could be seen to be selling their furniture, or indulging in ‘quasi‐gambling’ behaviour – and so chose unrelated user names. For many generalist eBayers who tended to regard eBay as a ‘big shop’, user names were completely insignificant – they often used ‘universal log ins’ they habitually used on websites. ‘About Me’ pages, eBay’s biographical pages, also appear to be a feature more heavily invested in by professional eBay sellers than buyers. eBay buyers rarely used ‘About Me’ pages as they saw little purpose in having one, and were concerned about the potential loss of control over their presentation of self through unintended audiences (cf. Miller, 1995) ‐ ‘About Me’ pages were often interpreted humorously, often because of the elision between collecting and being ‘nerdy’, and were reported to be circulated for their humorous currency. Professional sellers strongly mediated their identities through a commercial frame in About Me pages – revealing salient parts of their identity or life as an ‘offline world’ grounding to their virtual selves (through narrative or links), such as explaining their paths into being full‐time eBayers – in order to provide confidence to buyers and to legitimate themselves, and provide a more ‘personal’ experience. However, eBay buyers recognise these pages, cynically, as “personal advertising” and “self aggrandisement” rather than a reflection of ‘true’ identity. The results additionally show eBay item descriptions are an integral part of identity performances – both in terms of their construction by a seller but also in terms of their browsing by an audience. Item descriptions for collectables tend to be written in one of three ways, as also recognised by the audience – in a ‘knowing’ way, with genuine ‘unknowingness’ or with constructed ‘unknowingness’. Collectors may perform their knowledges with a certain ‘knowingness’ – to ‘knowing’ audiences and others ‘in the know’ (Gregson, Brooks and Crewe, 2001). These involve showing off appropriate cultural (Bourdieu, 1984) or subcultural capital (Thornton, 1995) through framing an item correctly in design history, using the correct keywords (e.g. ‘retro’, ‘Eames’) and technical terms, and sometimes making judgements about the item (quality, tastefulness, rarity). ‘Knowing’ item page authors also tend to recognise the importance of their visual literacy and the web page as a cultural form, and their eBay photographs reveal their visual and 14 RES‐000‐23‐0433 photographic expertise. Constructing a ‘knowing’ item description is underpinned by commercial imperatives and shows the strong elision between knowledge and advertising on eBay – correctly ‘framed’ descriptions with attractive visuals tend to attract a bigger audience. Miller has characterised websites as attempts to create aesthetic traps (Miller, 2000). Aesthetics and content are used to align the creator of the web pages with their audience – web pages are used to signal whether the website producer thinks their audience is ‘appropriate’ and draw them into social and/or commercial exchange. eBay buyers may search with particular keywords (such as ‘retro’, ‘groovy’, ‘cool’) ‐ which concerns buying into a particular identity performance through material culture which is ‘pre‐packaged’ as having certain connotations. However, the research has shown that highly experienced eBayers are resisting these aesthetic traps and ‘advertisements’ as ‘obvious buys’, in favour of their own “consumer authority” (Keat et al., 1994). ‘Pre‐packaged’ items are almost too easy for them, and they prefer to show off their knowledges by buying items with ‘unknowing’, incorrect or incomplete descriptions, which require additional ‘labour’ in terms of asking the right questions and extensive searching to find the item. This is partly about bargain hunting but also about re‐establishing the importance of their own knowledges. ‘Unknowing’ items may reflect ‘genuine’ unknowingness or ‘constructed’ unknowingess, and a ‘knowing’ audience tries to interpret which – constructed unknowingness involves a purposive obfuscation of the object through the projection of an unknowing positionality – to hide faults, fraud or non‐working condition. Genuinely unknowing descriptions are valued by collectors as the ‘best’ adverts (and appear genuine through being an unselfconscious projection of habitus), who also use these as the basis for performing their own ‘expert’ identities through their public (Internet discussion forums) or private (to the screen) critiques. Ethnicity was rarely revealed in eBay item descriptions in the study. However, in some categories, particularly Collectables: Asian/ Ethnographic, sellers (often based in the Far East) drew heavily on imagined geographies and social constructions of the East and Orient (Said, 1978) for the Western market ‐ with user names involving ‘Oriental’ elements and tropes such as pandas or carp, and trading on notions of ‘the other’ and the exotic. The category is also socially constructed with the material culture which formed many of the tropes of Orientalism and the East – such as dragon carvings, ‘oriental’ china, Buddhas and opium lamps. Objective 2: To examine the impact of eBay on collecting and the performance of collecting knowledges. eBay was initially set up in 1995 with collectors in mind ‐ where the traditional inefficiencies of person‐to‐person trading such as geographical fragmentation and imperfect knowledge could be offset through computer mediated communication (CMC) (vid. Bunnel and Luecke, 2000). The project’s results contend that the ways that goods are exchanged on the site make for a qualitatively new space that challenges the traditional practices, rituals and geographies of collecting (see obj. 4). Yet eBay also opens possibilities for new forms of ritual practice. Our interview and ethnographic work with radio and stamp collectors reveal a number of changes to 15 RES‐000‐23‐0433 collecting practices and rituals with the advent of eBay. First and foremost, eBay is rapidly accelerating the speed at which collections are accumulated. Collectors describe eBay as publicly ‘outing’ radios and stamps/covers that would require years of visits to physical venues to find. eBay’s central role in rapidly accelerating collecting itself causes problems ‐ it allows collectors to buy items they may later deem inappropriate for their collection, and some see the collecting challenge of eBay as both keeping within the boundaries of their collection, and refining that collection – so as not to be overwhelmed. Collectors are experiencing collecting in a more intense way with eBay, to the point where they feel it has “taken hold” of them – through constant and quasi‐obsessive browsing and buying of items because of the fast through‐put of goods in the auction format. Stamp and cover collectors appear to be more ‘overwhelmed’ than radio collectors ‐ as they have established price guides which clearly highlight the ‘bargain’ nature of their items. However, there is also evidence that early eBay adopters are becoming satiated. eBay has additionally changed collecting practices by enabling information and knowledge to be publicly offered and relationally performed. Unlike discussions among collectors at an event, knowledge on eBay can become part of a highly public performance. Sellers often publicly acknowledge (by name or user name) advice received about their item on eBay description pages. Public displays of knowledge on eBay are also grist to the mill of the U.K. Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration online discussion forum, a site for radio, hi‐fi and TV collectors. The forum’s knowledgeable collectors, who are also eBay participants, publicly deconstruct eBay descriptions for their assumed lack of knowledge as part of a performance of an elite group identity. Collecting rituals are also challenged on eBay. Rituals of exchange, for example, involve the movement of meaningful properties—such as ‘collectable’ or ‘rare’—between the trading parties. Acquisition rituals are also vital to traditional ways of collecting ‐ finding rare items is part of an acquisition ritual entailing extensive searching – “the hunt” (Olmsted, 1991). Buying on eBay means anyone may acquire a rare item, if prepared to pay the eBay price. Additionally, many items are listed as ‘rare’ to fetch higher prices. This disrupts traditional exchange rituals and makes it more difficult to transfer the meaning of an object’s rarity. Evaluating the rarity of an eBay item remains difficult even for knowledgeable collectors as listings frequently disrupt the social construction of rarity established by collecting communities – this may happen when a high eBay price creates a glut of supply of a ‘rare’ item. Buying items on eBay also challenges the importance of and pleasure in recalling how an item was acquired—a component of acquisition rituals that helps make an object special. Buying an item on eBay is regarded by some as ‘clinical’, and few collectors believe the provenance given to objects. eBay’s final challenge to traditional rituals of acquisition is that collecting should be an “organization of coincidences” (Grasskamp cited Belk, 1995). What items will look like, how and where they will be acquired, and can they be purchased at a bargain price—all are intrinsic to collecting rituals relying on the organization of coincidences. On eBay, the how and where are obvious (purchased through the site), and in general, prices may be inflated by a large market. But for many collectors, using eBay proves uncontentious in this respect, and few subscribe to formalized distinctions against collecting on eBay as being too ‘easy’ ‐ as their focus is on possession through 16 RES‐000‐23‐0433 ‘armchair collecting’ rather than the “hunt” of acquisition. Many collectors, particularly radio collectors, choose to complement eBay collecting by frequenting physical collecting arenas, which allow them to perform aspects of collecting rituals not possible on eBay ‐ places of serendipity where the ‘traditional’ organization of coincidences still come to pass. Yet it would be simplistic to suggest that eBay itself is an undifferentiated collecting space. Collectors are reformulating some of their rituals of collecting, particularly the “organization of coincidences,” through denying the ‘obvious buy’ and searching for relatively ‘unknown spaces’ on eBay where the potentially serendipitous item may await, which hi‐fi collector Philip sums up as a corollary between material geographies and eBay’s virtual geographies: …so yeah, sometimes you might find that someone has done a cock up on the
description, spelt it wrong, or they didn’t really know what they’ve got, you can maybe
get a bargain... it’s akin to us like at swapmeets going through boxes on the floor, it’s the
trawling through eBay looking through boxes on the floor for things that have fallen
between the stalls, you know, in the wrong category.
Stamp/cover collectors were more likely to find these unknown spaces in a ‘virtual bargain hunt’ than radio collectors, because of the volume of listings in their categories and the fact that signed covers were often listed without knowledge of the signature, and were less likely to find the need to re‐establish collecting rituals through physical arenas. In terms of the changing geographies of collecting, globalised collecting has increased significantly with eBay. Often, buying from abroad is another way to exploit eBay’s ‘unknown’ or ‘unknowing’ spaces – where items are less appreciated or not searched for. In terms of the geographies of attending physical events vs. eBay, some collectors have become purely virtual in practice, either due to reduced mobility or because they are driven by motives of possession and convenience, rather than ritual and the desire for sociality. There is evidence that radio collecting events have suffered, with the number of events reduced. The results show, anecdotally, physical events are also being ‘hollowed out’ with the best items cherry‐picked for eBay, where higher prices are possible – often leaving items that are less saleable or hard to post. In relation to networks of collectables, collectors’ internal distribution networks have been more heavily utilised in an eBay era for difficult to post items – events are used as nodes or pick up and exchange points for eBay items. eBay buyers may pick up at events or from collectors who live near to them, who transport the item back from an event as a favour to the seller. Collectables’ networks have also been adversely affected by eBay – the research suggests eBay has truncated dealer networks removing the ‘middle man’. House clearance dealers are putting items on to eBay and realizing an item’s value, circumventing the ‘food chain’ of specialist dealers who previously sold items on and took their slice. 17 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Objective 3: To understand eBay’s own sense of community in comparison to offline collecting communities. An examination of the project’s data on a sense of an eBay community reveals a highly complex and contentious picture, largely dependent on the individual’s perspective and experience in terms of: what they buy on eBay (general items or collectables in a narrow field) and how regularly; how they use eBay (as a tool in a goal‐directed manner, or to gain social interaction); and whether they like to belong to a group. Fostering a sense of community is revealed to be important business practice in e‐commerce to make sites “sticky” and self‐regulating through a sense of being a stakeholder. eBay’s own official definition of community is: “…all the buyers and sellers on the site as well as the staff that eBay employs […] The power of the community is that we’re all looking out for each other” (Wilson, 2005: 5) – invoking a social capital perspective and norms of generalized reciprocity (see Putnam, 2000) that you might expect from a “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998) – you help others and eventually expect to benefit ‘down the road’. Yet the project has sought to relate the eBay community to the many notions of “community” that exist in the literature, as well as its relationship to knowledge and material culture. Boyd (2000; 2002) argues that eBay is a “community of commerce”, with interaction underpinned by commercial aims. He also notes there are tensions between commerce and community notions, but suggests this tension may be resolved by seeing eBay as both a “community of interest” and “community of transaction” (Armstrong and Hagel, 1996). However, empirical evidence from our research suggests there are four meta‐concepts of community being outworked by eBay users: a community of commerce/transaction; a community of practice; communities of interest and imagined communities. Results also suggest that some eBayers totally reject the label of “community” in relation to eBay because of its commercial angle. Most of this rejection either comes from those who use eBay as a ‘tool’, and those engaged in more generalised purchasing rather than collecting.
Respondents liken their eBay experience to visiting Tesco – they’re not interested in the shop assistant’s name or telling them what a superb pie they made with last week’s potatoes. The competitive nature of eBay in both buying and selling is also perceived to mitigate against a sense of community. Transaction‐based social interaction is seen by both buyers and sellers to be unfulfilling – eBay’s own new ‘checkout’ system is seen to limit the social interaction of the past, whilst sellers talk of “warmth”, but “you don’t make huge lasting relationships” and the “fickleness of customers”. This relates to Gurak’s (2001) fragmented eBay communities. eBayers are cynical of the “community” label – they suggest that the notion of an eBay community is beneficial to eBay as a business to make people more amenable to paying fees, and see eBay’s pushing of the concept as ‘indoctrination’. eBay, themselves, recognise the business benefits of having a “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998). “Communities of practice” are defined as “…groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger, N.D.: 1). Interactions in such communities facilitate trust and other beneficial aspects of building social capital (Smith, 2003). There is a shared domain of interest, knowledge exchange, and a shared repertoire of resources including vocabulary (ibid.) – which invokes other notions of “discursive 18 RES‐000‐23‐0433 community” (Hutcheon, 1995) and “speech community” (Golder and Donath, 2004). eBay was recognised in the study as having its own in‐group language, such as the term ‘eBayer’ and standard feedback responses like “A++++”. Our results show that eBay buyers and sellers often gain a sense of community through the practice and performance of ‘doing eBay’ and having the appropriate eBay knowledges. They describe a shared experience of eBay as like being part of a “clique” or exclusionary “secret society”, and being an eBayer is about being “given the knowledge”. eBay practice was much talked about offline ‐ with family members and in work contexts: “I started a course here at the beginning of the week […] and nobody had met anybody before, so you go round the houses […] I sell things on eBay. And two other people said: ‘Well, I sell things on eBay.’ And that community started there and then” (FG3E). People share stories about the latest eBay scams or problems they’re having, and even saw attending the project’s eBay focus groups as an opportunity for learning. eBay communities of practice were also shown to exist within other communities – as communities of practice within communities of practice – such as in subsections of online discussion forums (like the vintage radio forum) and newsgroups. eBay community pages were used by only a very small number of the study’s participants ‐ many said they were just not interested and didn’t have the time. Feedback was also seen as an intrinsic part of the eBay community – not giving it was seen as breaking a community ‘norm’, and getting and building good feedback comments made people feel part of a wider community as ‘good citizens’ or stakeholders. Some people were revealed as excluded from the eBay community of practice through lack of a computer, computer skills, Internet access or being under‐18. People also self‐excluded themselves through security concerns and trust issues. However, some, such as young people in their early teens, reconnected themselves through using friends and family as mediating ‘agents’ in buying and selling. Within the “community of commerce” and “community of practice” are found to be numerous “communities of interest” – lifestyle enclaves (Bellak cited Fernback, 1997) who share common interests. These are described in geographic terms and related to material culture and very specific collecting interests: “I suspect
there’s a set of smaller communities, a bit like mini-villages; so there’s a mini-village for
stamps… And I imagine there’s a set of housing estates within the villages as well” (Gerard, stamp collector). However, there are many ‘generalist’ eBay buyers and sellers who get no form of community from what they buy and sell – because there is no consistent pattern. Many “communities of interest” pre‐existed eBay, and so eBay merely represents some offline communities ‘going online’. This included stamp and radio collectors who had met prior to eBay, and recognised the buyer or seller’s name after completing a transaction. Some people meet on eBay first, then find they are thrown together again because of their collecting interest – at fairs and exhibitions. However, some “communities of interest” exist entirely on eBay, especially with collectors who do not attend physical fairs or meetings. It particularly helps those who are geographically remote or who are constrained from participating in offline collecting. One novel form of “community of interest” and consumption communities which exists on eBay in virtual form is revealed in the research – “communities of bidding” or “bidding circles”. This involves the feeling of being part of a particular specialist global community of interest by very regularly 19 RES‐000‐23‐0433 seeing the same eBay user ids crop up in bidding (“the usual ID names”). “Communities of bidding” may contain what are regarded as ‘arch rivals’, and fierce competition may ensue. However, one eBayer in the study decided to contact his Brazilian arch rival after losing out to another competitor. They struck up a conversation and now regularly correspond and have face‐to‐face visits. They also have a protocol as to who bids for what item – creating a form of auction ring. The research suggests the type of material culture collected is also important as to whether there is a sense of a “community of interest” through eBay practice – stamp collectors in the study had a greater feeling of online community than radio collectors – since they bought greater volumes of material, often as repeat purchases from the same people. Radio collectors quickly ran out of space for additional purchases, and often bought from diverse individuals. eBay has additionally allowed, through its interface design, the formation of “communities of interest”, even where specific categories do not exist. This was charted in the study in terms of “gay interest” – the term is used in item description titles and an eBay keyword search recovers them ‐ as a ‘virtual’ but not official eBay category. eBay’s sense of ‘virtual’ community is also understood by the research participants in relation to their offline communities of meetings and collectors’ fairs. A sense of an eBay community mostly comes off worse in this comparison, and is regarded by many as no substitute for offline interaction – offline collecting communities are regarded as “safe and chummy”, with a chance to catch up and chat with friends and acquaintances – the “same old faces”. Much is placed on the ‘experience’ of the offline – queuing up on a Sunday morning to get in – whereas eBay’s experience is described as “faceless” with an amount of information that is difficult to absorb. Yet, the eBay community of interest shares similarities with the offline community – the “same old faces” become the “usual ID names”. The research reveals that many eBay participants had a rich imaginary world when it came to the eBay community, which they used to compensate for a lack of the usual social information. A sense of an eBay community, therefore, finally involves it being an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) ‐ existing in the mind, but with boundaries. Much of this involves imagining “bidding communities” or “communities of interest” – one eBayer constructed himself as being on the edge of a giant circle of other Concorde‐related collectors, and began to imagine the content and extent of their collections. Others look at user‐ids and buying and selling, and try and build up a picture of people such as the gender of the collector. eBayers use whatever information they can get to build up an imagined picture of their own eBay virtual community – from perceived tastes of individuals, to whether they are fringe or central members of that community. However, the eBay community and its composition is itself ‘imagined’ within other community spaces such as the online Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration forum. eBay is there perceived to be a virtual space or territory – “e‐bay land” or “planet Ebayʺ ‐ where specific practices occur which are seen as the antithesis of those performed by the forum ‘experts’. Posters to the forum spend time ‘imagining’ those who occupy “planet Ebay”. eBay sellers are even said to have their own language – “ebayese” – because of their perceived ‘non‐
expert’ use of technical terms, and purposive ‘spin’ of their item descriptions to incorporate keywords which attract eBay ‘lookers’. The virtual eBay community is ironically imagined to have many of the elements of a nation state. 20 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Objective 4: Contribute to an understanding of the very contrasting consumer and collecting knowledges that are brought to bear on an electronic ‘catalogue’ of mostly second‐hand items. eBay has provided new ways to buy, sell and browse for collectables and second‐
hand items through its difference to what was available before it. At its inception, e‐
commerce had provided vast catalogues of new goods to buy, such as through single companies like Amazon.com. eBay allowed individuals and businesses to also sell second‐hand and non‐standard items, but allowed them to construct the descriptions themselves – to form a vast stock of goods for sale. Buying and selling second‐hand and collectable items often involved a more complex set of knowledges involving, for example, cultural and subcultural capital and specific collecting knowledges (technical, historical) than mainstream new goods. Classified ads publications such as Loot also had many self‐described items and eventually went online, but had no shipping options, and rarely pictures or lengthy descriptions. Static e‐commerce sites had sold second‐hand items and collectables, but never on this scale – and there was rarely any ‘come back’ for misdescriptions or fraud, whereas eBay at least allowed negative feedback and sometimes compensation. Classified ads and static e‐
commerce sites were also ostensibly fixed price, whereas eBay allowed the buyer to determine the price for items of often uncertain value through an auction format (Smith, 1989) and ‘bidding up’. Physical auctions were also different to eBay – remote bidders could rarely get comprehensive and ‘accountable’ item descriptions, and shipping is expensive. eBay has been described by eBayers in the research as a ‘virtual car boot sale’, and aspects of the boot sale apply to some listings ‐ with flexible prices; pleasures from the spectacle and the searching; and with various modes of participation as browser, buyer and seller ‐ which are largely permeable (vid. Gregson and Crewe, 1994). However, a virtual boot sale seems like a contradiction in terms ‐ its ‘virtual’ nature makes it 24/7 rather than sporadic, items are mostly described individually rather than presented haphazardly and in bulk, sales are not limited to a local geographic market, and no in‐person assessment of items is possible. eBay is a qualitatively different and new consumption space, an amalgam of elements from pre‐existing consumption arenas, where consumer and collecting knowledges are brought to bear differently. Yet it is increasingly an unstable, hybrid domain, moving from being an ‘alternative’ consumption space into being ‘mainstream’ – with the selling of fixed price items, and new goods, by increasingly ‘professionalised’ sellers – as a recognised shopping portal for almost anything and funded by credit cards. The results reveal one of the principle consumer knowledges brought to eBay is an understanding of risk. Some of these risks are an inherent part of buying second‐hand items, but are compounded by the virtual context. There is a sense of ‘bad things to buy on eBay’, which are described as items such as cars or mechanical equipment which are likely to deteriorate with use, but which is not visible and possibly undeclared. However, these were still purchased if the buyer felt the trade off between price and risk was acceptable, and if they had the practical (often gendered) skills to put things right if they needed repair. Authenticity was also a problem on eBay, and was noted as a particular problem for stamp and cover 21 RES‐000‐23‐0433 collectors in terms of completely fabricated items and forged signatures, and not being able to see the item made it harder to judge. However, being in the virtual domain creates more layers of risk than purely being at a distance from the second‐
hand item. ‘Reality’ may also be forgotten, lost or supplanted in the virtual (Shields, 2003). eBay buyers have to assess if the item does in fact exist – whether the photograph has been ‘stolen’ from another source, or complex frauds involving (mis)representation. The item is also constructed by the seller in words and pictures, and buyers have to assess the accuracy of this construction through triangulation with external factual information, and through their own knowledges of the item – through a sense of ‘knowing more’ about its history, rarity or technical aspects. Much of the risk involved in eBay buying is related to the seller – are they telling the truth, will they wrap the item well, will they send it? Buyers are shown to bring intelligent interpretation to eBay listings and feedback – eBay is associated with its own set of consumer knowledges and skills. This involves untangling the reasons behind negative feedback, and raking through feedback to see buying and selling activity, even investigating in turn those who had previously bought from the seller. This was described as getting the “whole picture”. eBay sellers were shown to be anxious about selling second‐hand online with their reputation at risk, because they expected buyers to bring with them consumer knowledges from the new goods domain (which they sometimes did), about the expected condition of goods (perfection) and a notion of consumer rights from the first cycle of exchange. Being an eBayer was also revealed to be a highly reflexive (Giddens, 1984) consumption practice – people are acquiring particular consumer and collecting knowledges from eBay browsing: eBay is mapping material culture in terms of what is in circulation globally, providing up‐to‐the‐minute prices and an idea of rarity from how frequently items appear, and knowledge from the content of ‘expert’ descriptions. eBay consumer knowledges were also described as being acquired over time as part of a ‘learning curve’, and eBay sellers quickly gained a knowledge of consumers through studying the eBay market and using things such as eBay’s ‘Pulse’ which reveals consumer keyword searches. Yet eBayers in the study also acknowledge the dangers of being too eBay‐centric, which may lead to you paying higher prices than on the high street. The consumer and collecting knowledges brought to eBay also involved playing off eBay against other online and offline consumption arenas in both buying and selling ‐ to get the best trade off of price, risk, quality and convenience. For collectables’ sellers, eBay is often used for items of uncertain value with speculative potential instead of their e‐commerce websites. eBay is also used for reselling items bought from other second‐hand arenas – car boot sales, charity shops and collectors’ fairs – eBayers use their consumer knowledges to buy items with ‘eBay potential’ for profit. eBay has reconstituted the ‘givens’ of the second‐hand landscape as another ‘choice’. Reflexive consumption practices, initiated by eBay use, concerning price and market knowledge, have led people to re‐
evaluate their disposal routes for goods – such as substituting from charity shops to eBay. Yet eBay is acknowledged as a poor place to sell some larger collectables such as radiograms, which are taken to collectors’ fairs instead. eBay buyers also use the high street when they want a guarantee, a potential refund, no second‐hand stigma or a purchase without compromise – for which they pay a higher price. They may also go back to other second‐hand arenas to buy items which fetch premium prices 22 RES‐000‐23‐0433 on eBay – taking advantage of their limited geographic market and fewer ‘lookers’. But second‐hand arenas such as charity shops are also, in turn, selectively using eBay to maximise value. Objective 5: To provide two unique datasets: (a) the use and experience of Internet auctions by buyers, sellers and browsers and (b) collecting in an e‐society. This objective has been fully met – the datasets have been offered to Qualidata and accepted for preservation and archiving. Dataset (a) is composed of material gathered from the participants in Table 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 (see Appendix); while dataset (b) is composed of material from Tables 4 and 5. However, there is a large area of overlap between both datasets in terms of providing data on sub‐objectives (a) and (b). Objective 6: To develop an innovative research methods mix, in order to provide a contribution to the online application of qualitative research methods. This objective has been met through the methodological approach adopted in the research – please see ‘Methods and Analysis’ for a full account. Objective 7: To make a theoretical contribution through the potential reformulation of Bourdieu’s notion of habitus in an e‐society. At the project’s outset, it was anticipated that exploring eBay may allow us to reformulate Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of the habitus in an e‐society, following from other discussions of habitus and CMC use (Couldry, 2004; Lawley, 1994; Piecowye, 2003). The ‘habitus’ refers to ‘structuring structures’ through which particular class fractions learn the tastes and consumption practices associated with that fraction, as socially conditioned ‘dispositions’ – through education, socialisation and parental influences. Dispositions tend to perpetuate themselves through the reiteration of similarly structured practices. It was suggested that the Internet and websites like eBay could potentially disrupt these structuring structures by providing ‘off the peg’ consumption dispositions. Consumption dispositions could be ‘learnt’ through researching an eBay user’s buying history and internalising it, or through ‘learning’ online about taste and ‘legitimate’ culture from item descriptions. Leyshon et al. (2004) note that within e‐commerce, wider ranges of consumption dispositions and practices are made possible, and question if these lead to consumers becoming more alike or different. Our research suggests a much more complex picture than anticipated, however. Although eBay undoubtedly has power as an ‘educator’ about material culture and collecting knowledges, it does not seem to have radically changed buyers’ tastes or led to any emulation of others (or disruption of habitus) in terms of a performance of identity through taste and distinction. eBay has undoubtedly changed what consumers buy, as Neil, a stamp and cover collector comments: “It
gives you a bigger …window of opportunity”. However, while some of the radio collectors may now own American and Australian sets with more extreme styling, 23 RES‐000‐23‐0433 this is not a radical shift in taste – merely an extension of their tastes and preferences into a wider field. Their tastes and preferences appear heavily internalised, and a significant finding is eBay’s vast array of goods appears to have provided the opportunity for them to operate an even more refined sense of themselves (cf. Piecowye, 2003) through consumer items – through being more “discerning”. Indeed, there is a tendency towards ‘cyberbalkanisation’ (Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson, 1996) amongst collectors who use eBay rather than collect in physical arenas – eBay allows for a degree of hyper‐specialisation through the possibilities of search and filtration – which reinforces their own dispositions, preferences and tastes rather than exposing them to anything new. However, while buyers do not appear to be ‘stealing’ off‐the‐peg consumption dispositions, the same is not true for sellers. Many eBay sellers are using their innate knowledge and cultural capital for competitive advantage – to ‘spin’ items in the ‘appropriate’ way for an audience with similar tastes operating similar distinctions, as ‘aesthetic traps’ (Miller, 2000). Slater describes how different product definitions describe different markets, and how advertisers act as sociologists and cultural anthropologists to conceptualise and define their products strategically for the market (Slater, 2002). While such knowledges are situated and can’t be taught or learnt (Crewe, Gregson and Brooks, 2003), some second‐hand retailing such as retro retailing is seen as using “eminently plagiarizable” (2003: 91) notions of taste, distinction and quality. We would argue that with eBay these notions are even more plagiarizable in a new media context because they are publicly documented in text and photos, and some eBay sellers are copying item pages wholesale without necessarily understanding what they are citing. eBay sellers are able to study how other retro and second‐hand retailers ‘spin’ their items as a kind of reflexive practice. They explore which retro or second‐hand sellers get better prices for their items, and deconstruct item pages for reasons why – such as photographing items artistically, describing in terms of legitimate taste or particular designers. Objective 8: To provide data and analysis useful to a wide variety of non‐academic users from the commercial to the policy community: (a) To produce knowledge and analysis of e‐commerce practices and the user experience that would help reduce the risks of failure in setting up or modifying e‐commerce sites. Viewed by some as the ‘killer application’ of the Internet (Urban, 2005), eBay’s innovative business model is often heralded as exemplary within the Internet sector. In terms of ‘best practice’ for fostering engaging e‐commerce experiences, an holistic understanding of the eBay experience can sign‐post elements of ‘best practice’ for the design of e‐commerce sites. Although a ‘special kind’ of e‐commerce proposition as an Internet auction site ‐ as our research reveals ‐ the overall success of eBay, including how and why it ‘matters’ (Miller, 1998) to people, has been shaped by factors generally salient to e‐commerce sites: its aesthetic appeal, content, and ease of use (cf. System Concepts, N.D.). With competitor sites being only a ‘click away’, e‐
commerce sites need to be ‘sticky’, operating to both attract and engage users (Chen 24 RES‐000‐23‐0433 and Sockel, 2004), with reports suggesting that eBay has actually raised the bar for stickiness (ACNielsen, 2001). With eBay’s stickiness attracting an increasingly growing community of buyers and sellers, this creates almost a ‘self‐perpetuating cycle’ of stickiness, which makes it difficult for competitor auction sites to gain the critical mass to compete (cf. Hagel and Armstrong, 1997). In terms of other effective ‘sticky elements’, our research maps onto the literature, signalling that these elements generally relate to: the design of the site (including usability), its actual content, and community aspects. Stickiness, in general, requires paying attention to the implicit needs of customers (Marshall, 2003) and eBay’s site developments have occurred through lessons learned through observation, qualitative research (e.g. eBay’s ‘Voice of the Community program’) and periodic testing with a range of users – eBay’s reconstitution as a site is as reflexive in terms of knowledges as the consumers and producers who use it. eBay is mostly regarded by our participants as having good basic usability to the point where this is largely ‘taken‐for‐granted’. But it is sticky content that makes the site worth visiting and ‘matter’, and usability permits this content to be experienced with minimal costs to the user. Although customers were initially drawn to eBay as a place to trade collectables and hard‐to‐
find items, today eBay cannot be regarded as a collectables site. Herein lays its attraction as a ‘one‐stop‐shop’ and another shopping portal where all tastes can be satisfied. The site also has ‘sticky features’ which ‘matter’ in the user experience – such as the ability to search using terms that ‘matter’ to them, and the ability to find out price information and current market values for completed items – very relevant to both buyers and potential sellers. E‐commerce sites must consider allowing users to search their sites using their own terms, and not try to pre‐determine these. They must also develop features that users will find useful beyond the transaction (such as Amazon’s reviews and recommendations) that make them return. Moreover, eBay’s stickiness is revealed as a product of the belief that at some undetermined moment, an ‘elusive’ good or ‘perfect aesthetic item’ will appear. Collectors, in particular, although bargain hunters too, are drawn to eBay because of its ever‐changing content with the 1‐10 day auction duration offered – there is always something ‘fresh’ to look at. Collectors tend to look at eBay almost obsessively, in case a key missing element of their collection should suddenly materialise ‐ as part of an ‘intense’ consumption experience of constant monitoring. eBay also encourages this intense surveillance of how item prices are changing through their ‘My eBay’ facility – used by both buyers and sellers. Simple static (in both content and design) web presences will not encourage repeat visits and extended stays in e‐commerce, and static e‐commerce sites must generate changing content – such as offers or time‐
limited bargains. eBay’s community aspects are also vitally important to its success. Our research supports the general hypothesis that trust is a pre‐requisite for e‐commerce sites to matter to people, as if they are not trusted, they will not be used. With transactions largely conducted through the ‘veil’ of the virtual, facilitating trust must remain high on eBay’s agenda. Trust is particularly important on eBay or any distributed market ‐ with thousands of sellers listing items and ‘fulfilling’ the e‐
commerce experience themselves. eBay’s business relies heavily on its community trust model, built largely on eBay’s Feedback Forum, which acts to publicise the reputations of the buyers and sellers and self‐regulate the market, whilst stabilising 25 RES‐000‐23‐0433 virtual identities. Giving feedback is not a requirement, but feedback was seen by most users in the study as an intrinsic part of the eBay community – not giving it was seen as breaking a community ‘norm’, and building good feedback comments against a user id made people in the study feel part of a wider community as ‘good citizens’ or stakeholders (see obj 3) in eBay’s success. Building a reputation and stable identity or brand is vital in the virtual – unknown e‐commerce websites and the consumer would benefit from more use of customer feedback or recommendation features to establish reputation in the less trusted ‘virtual’. As stakeholders, eBayers recognise their impact on eBay’s success and of eBay’s success for them personally (e.g. accurate descriptions, good prices) – individual and community interests are aligned. Users have a ‘feel good factor’ in the reward of positive feedback, and take pride in acquiring different coloured stars next to their user names which give status while indicating the number of positive eBay experiences and helping eBay’s success. Other e‐commerce sites could also reward their highly‐motivated consumers ‐ for example, by offering ‘dividends’ for reaching certain spending levels. Pierre Omidyar, eBay’s creator, saw its potential as a means to make the individual a producer as well as consumer (Cohen, 1999). eBay additionally allows its users to feel as stakeholders since they generate the majority of the site’s content themselves – through item descriptions and community pages. eBay’s community pages operate partly as a “community of practice” where learning and an exchange of information on eBay problems occurs – which both lightens the load of eBay’s own staff and provides data for more reflexive site changes. The community pages additionally produce sticky and changing content in terms of sociality – eBayers are able to search out “communities of interest” (around consumption or other shared perspectives) within them or even virtual work colleagues. Having community pages on appropriate e‐commerce sites can generate additional stickiness and success, particularly for consumer items with fans, devotees or related communities of interest; and also indicate user experience problems without the need for explicit user research. (b) To contribute insights to those responsible for the structures, systems architecture and distribution systems of e‐commerce: distribution of goods, distribution of money and Internet infrastructure. The growth of eBay into the world’s largest e‐commerce site has been built on the back of three ‘real networks’ – those which deliver goods, those which involve money flows and an Internet infrastructure. Our results show eBay has had interesting and complex implications for the ‘real networks’ which underpin the exchange of goods. The amount of items being sold on eBay has not only been perceived to put pressure on existing networks through an increase in business (particularly for Royal Mail), but led to complex negotiations by eBayers in terms of choosing between and cherry‐picking the services of these existing intermediaries, and substituting their business to new intermediaries which have grown up to cater for eBay and e‐commerce. eBay is shown to make highly visible problems with existing ‘real networks,’ particularly with its globalising effects on the exchange of goods. In terms of the money flows behind the exchange, traditional banks are seen by our research 26 RES‐000‐23‐0433 participants as very expensive, slow and highly administrative in terms of being able to deal with foreign currency transactions. These foreign exchange transactions have particularly been substituted away from banks in favour of PayPal, which has the arm chair convenience that eBayers are used to. In terms of the distribution of goods, eBay’s main contribution, as shown by the research, has been the cherry‐picking of national carriers’ distribution services through the perspective of a ‘chain of accountability’ back to the seller. eBay sellers increasingly require traceability, and quick, full refunds to the full value of eBay items. Couriers tend to be preferable for larger, high value items which need traceability – Royal Mail’s standard parcel service is untraceable. However, some needs are not currently catered for at all, such as a fragile service, and both Royal Mail and couriers are seen as likely to damage fragile or large items. Where no adequate service exists to cater for eBayers’ needs, this often stops them bidding for such items, affects saleability and ultimately supply – for example eBayers often do not bid where foreign currency payments are needed and PayPal is not an option. These unmet needs mean a loss of business to both eBay and the real networks, who could adapt to meet these service omissions. In addition, the research shows eBay is not only supported by the ‘real networks’ of distribution, money and Internet infrastructure, it in turn has supported them. Without eBay, it is likely that many more local post offices would have closed in that period due to diminishing revenues from elsewhere. National carriers such as the Royal Mail and Parcel Force seem, from our study, to have benefited most from the rise of eBay trade because of their accessible network. eBay has also been one factor amongst others (such as releasing the phone line) in encouraging the fast adoption of Broadband by eBay buyers, according to our study, but is the ‘killer application’ of Broadband adoption for eBay sellers – because of the need for a fast, reliable, always on connection for listing and 24/7 customer service. At the time our project proposal was written, it was felt that eBay could be a way of marketing Broadband to those still on dial‐up. However, the conversion to Broadband during 2004/ 2005 has been remarkably high. Remaining dial‐up customers in the study are still using dial up because of the perceived effort or problems in switching – rather than any need to be persuaded of Broadband’s benefits in eBay use. (c) To contribute information relevant to the policy community – including insights into eBay self‐employment and consumer issues. The rise of the “eBay phenomenon” (Bunnel and Luecke, 2000) has had implications for the wider policy community. This has first and foremost been in terms of self‐
employment. eBay has meant 10,000 full‐time jobs (Bown, 2005) and 50,000 Britons earning some money from the online auction site (Blakely, 2005). However, this is unlikely to be a net gain, with results suggesting substitution effects away from traditional (offline) intermediaries who impose ‘middleman’ margins – such as specialist antique dealers ‐ due to increased price knowledge through eBay and its undercutting of retail prices. Traditional intermediaries are having to counter substitution effects by using eBay themselves, providing a more personal and trusted service, and by monopolising supply. New jobs have been shown in our study to have arisen in terms of new intermediaries which have grown up around eBay, such 27 RES‐000‐23‐0433 as eBay drop shops. All the eBay sellers interviewed in the study began their businesses with no help, and eBay has provided an easy entry route with few of the traditional barriers of having your own business. This may seem like a self‐
employment panacea, which should be backed up with more help from government and voluntary sector organisations. Indeed, eBay may provide an income for those who have been excluded from the formal labour market in some way such as by being made redundant, being a carer or being disabled in some way – circumstances which were represented in our study participants ‐ but often their reasons for choosing eBay for their waged employment were multi‐faceted. One of the most striking reasons for being a self‐employed eBayer was revealed to be dissatisfaction and frustration with an existing job in formal sector employment – such as boredom or doing a ‘mundane’ job, or the limitations of formal sector in supplying the desired job in a particular geographic location for those with specialised training. The study shows that eBay self‐employment has many positive elements. Being able to sell via eBay from anywhere, and flexibly, to a world market, makes it an appropriate solution when ‘going out’ to work for certain hours isn’t possible – and is particularly appreciated for gaining a better work/life balance. However, being an eBay seller was shown to be no panacea. Most of the eBay sellers reported having an erratic income, with the nature of eBay and PayPal tending to exacerbate the problem. Earning an erratic income on eBay is also revealed to be a product of buyers delaying their payments – respondents felt eBay was perceived as some amateurish venue for second‐hand exchange – rather than as a place where people earn their living. Concomitantly, being an eBay seller was revealed to have a low status as an occupation, regarded as a “rag and bone” business. Working from home rather than experiencing the sociality of a geographically distant workplace is also seen as a negative aspect of eBay self‐employment, and some eBay sellers supplement their eBay selling with other part‐time employment. eBay flexibility also has its paradoxical elements – for some in the study eBay is a 24/7 bind which can interfere with taking holidays and sellers’ social lives. A more profound set of long‐
term problems for eBayers selling second‐hand, as revealed in the fieldwork, are the compound issues of increased competition on eBay as the eBay market matures – driving down previously high prices ‐ and a diminishing stock of original second‐
hand items for them to sell. Self‐employed eBayers were selling to other businesses (through eBay contacts but ‘off eBay’), but preferred selling to the consumer market because businesses offered much lower prices. Self‐employed eBayers also suspected businesses were covertly taking advantage of eBay’s low prices in some categories (e.g. jewellery) to resell in physical shops. It is difficult for eBay sellers to find a good supply of second‐hand items at cheap prices, and some sellers are selling reproduction pieces as ‘originals’ (particularly jewellery) – regarded by eBay sellers in the study as unfair competition. There are also perceived problems of unfair competition through shill bidding – using friends and alternate eBay identities to drive up item prices. The research suggests it is therefore advisable for eBay self‐
employment to be one income‐stream amongst others – such as a static e‐commerce website or a physical outlet – so‐called “multi‐channel retailing” (see Currah, 2002), or to use eBay as an introduction to having your own business. Indeed, many of the eBay sellers interviewed were moving over to this strategy to secure a more reliable income stream, as the eBay market matures – where more sellers come to the site and 28 RES‐000‐23‐0433 some demands are already satiated. eBayers were reluctant to receive start up help because of their propensity to independence and sometimes due to their treatment of eBay selling as a ‘hobby business’. It is difficult to produce generic training for eBay sellers, but some combination of a self‐employment bookkeeping, coupled with HTML and web design tailored for eBay shops and item descriptions, would appear to be beneficial, alongside grants or loans for stock and computer equipment for those using eBay for income‐generation after unemployment, or early on in their careers. eBay has also attracted considerable media attention for the consumer issues it raises. Many eBay users participating in the study were concerned about their own consumer privacy, with the issue of seeing what people had bought and sold through their feedback profile being particularly contentious – with the potential to gain someone’s address just a transaction away. Those in our two year study had also experienced many types of fraud – such as misdescribed items, receiving counterfeit goods or not receiving items at all. eBay have a key role in getting buyers their money back in cases of fraud. However, paying by PayPal is increasingly the only way to get more than partial redress as a buyer and seller – eBay is ‘locking in’ users to paying by or accepting PayPal (from which it derives a percentage) as part of their business model, if they want a degree of insurance. eBay ‘newbies’ who have not yet learnt the appropriate consumer knowledges to offset their risk are revealed to be particularly vulnerable to sophisticated frauds. Stronger fraud prevention and id verification measures are needed to prevent opportunistic fraudsters with no or limited feedback from selling high value items, to those yet to learn ‘intelligent interpretation’ of eBay. 5. Activities Academic: ● Conference presentation for International Geographical Congress conference (RGS) (2004) ● Powerpoint slides for the University of Essex Vice Chancellorʹs presentation to members of Court (2004) ● Article for the British Vintage Wireless Society Bulletin (2004) ● Conference presentation for RGS‐IBG Annual International Conference (2005) ● Management, organisation, concept development, plenary presentation and closing remarks at the UK’s first independent academic conference on eBay – ‘Cultures of eBay,’ University of Essex, August 2005, attended by 40 delegates ● Yahoo! Groups mailing list set up for delegates ● JISC‐mail mailing list eBay‐studies set up for discussion eBay scholarship ● Conference paper presented at the People Inspired Innovation conference, Ipswich (2005) ● Departmental seminar, University of Essex, Sociology (2005) ● University of Essex, ‘Tuesday Taster’ session (academics and non‐academics) (2005) ● Five steering group audio conferences (June 2004, August 2004, December 2004, March 2005, Oct 2005) ● Final physical steering group meeting including user groups and academics, January 2006, London. This meeting was aimed at user groups (particularly BT, Royal Mail and PRIME (self employment)) who expressed a preference for dissemination of results in this format, rather than in separate workshops (as proposed in the project dissemination). User groups had also been invited to the Cultures of eBay conference via a wide variety of mailing lists. It was also decided, on discussion with Ian Stobie (of PRIME), to 29 RES‐000‐23‐0433 disseminate self employment results through him and the EnterQuest Bulletin, rather than a workshop, due to the lack of initial response to requests for project involvement from the Small Business Service and Business Link. Media (please see the ESRC Society Today website – keyword ‘eBay’): Radio Interviews ● 03/02/04 7.50am. BBC Essex radio interview, live. ● 03/02/04 Essex FM, off air interview. Television interviews ● 05/02/04 BBC London News. Regional news programme for the London area. Live at 1.30pm, pre‐
recorded at 6.30 ‐ 7pm. ● 09/02/04 BBC Look East. Regional news programme for East Anglia. 6.30 ‐ 7pm and 10.30 pm. Newspaper articles ● 30/01/04 Daily Mirror, short paragraph ʹLot of cash,ʹ p.27. Based on the research team’s initial publicity of the award in the University of Essex’s Wyvern publication. ● 06/02/04 Times Higher Education Supplement. Dr Ellis was interviewed by Alison Utley, in the context of a THES giveaway book on Machiavelli, which later fetched £10 on eBay a week later. http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2010386 Web articles ● 03/02/2004 Article about the research appeared on the BBC News Online UK site. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/essex/3455029.stm Ceefax 03/02/04 Based on television interviews. Advice to the media/ TV production companies: ● Alastair Mckee. C4 News. Contact on August 2004. Interested in eBay as a source of self‐
employment. ● Nicola Seare. BBCʹs The Money Programme. Contact November 2004. Interest in the project and eBay matters more generally for a potential programme. ● Esme Wren. Newsnight. Contact August 2005. Interested in eBay as part of understanding the cultural impact of the Internet. ● Discussion with Xanthe Hinchey, Radio 5 Live, on eBay’s 10th anniversary, October 2005 ● Discussion with 30 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Peter Walter, Raw Television, planning to make an eBay documentary, December 2005 ● Interview for Australian Vogue, ‘Vogue comment: Never gonna give you up’, Felicity Loughrey (words), April 2006, pgs 78‐79. 6. Outputs Nominated outputs: Ellis, R. M. and Haywood, A. (2006) ʹVirtual_radiophile (163
): eBay and the changing collecting practices of the UK vintage radio community,ʹ in Hillis, K.; Petit, M. and Epley, N (eds) Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting and Desire (Routledge, New York), 45‐61. Ellis, R. M. and Haywood, A. (in submission) ‘Bakelite and other Shibboleths: eBay listings and the ‘policing’ of ʹinexpertʹ collecting knowledges within the space of an online vintage radio forum’, Journal of Consumer Culture. We have also been asked to submit a monograph proposal to the Springer Kluwer Computer‐Supported Co‐operative Work Series. However, our priority at present is on submitting academic papers to peer‐reviewed journals. Our outputs differ from those specified in the initial project proposal, which tentatively outlined the areas of firstly innovative research methods and secondly material culture on eBay as a critical mediator of community and identity. Our nominated outputs reflect the material over which we have had time for the most critical reflection – the collecting area. However, other papers following the many research strands of the project are in various stages of preparation. These include one on innovative research methods, focusing on the use of Blogs as a qualitative research tool; a paper on the eBay community and its relationship with existing collecting communities; and lastly on eBay and virtually second‐hand – its questionable role as an “alternative consumption space”, its materialisations and the role of knowledge and identity there. It is envisaged that RME will submit an application for an ESRC fellowship in order to fully exploit the wealth of data gathered in the project. Four reports have also been produced for end users, following reviewers’ comments ‐ and placed on the ESRC Society Today website, our project website and departmental website, as well as being distributed to users in our steering group. These included: ‘The Implications of eBay for Real Networks’, ‘The Implications of eBay for the Policy Community’, ‘eBay and Changing Collecting Practices’ (including the impact of eBay on a collectables manufacturer and dealer) and ‘User experience insights from eBay: how to make e‐commerce sites matter to people’. One difficulty encountered in terms of outputs involved the Copyright issues in both storing and reproducing eBay pages. This was an unexpected problem as it was believed that pages ‘in the public domain’ would come under academic ‘fair `dealing’ rules. Future ESRC applicants should be made aware of the potential problems of reproducing and storing company web pages, and the researchers believe that the ESRC and other funding councils could be involved in lobbying 31 RES‐000‐23‐0433 companies such as eBay, in whom academics have an interest, to allow a less restrictive use of web pages in the public domain. Other outputs included the construction of two password protected websites (please see our entry on the ESRC Society Today). One of these was the project website, and details of this were distributed to project participants after their interviews so they could look at project progress. This was also used for specific media enquiries. A second website was created for our Cultures of eBay conference, which included a password protected area where conference presentations and working papers (including our own) were available for viewing and download to delegates. These websites were not ‘public’ in the sense of being openly available to all until now, due to considerable media interest in the project (see ‘Activities’) and problems of control over ‘meaning’. 7. Impacts Due to the timescales of publishing, our first substantive findings have just been published this month (see ‘Outputs’). However, our earlier reports (from 2004) and interpretations were cited and helped shape the academic papers that were presented at the Cultures of eBay Conference in 2005, in particular Denegri‐Knott and Hunter’s paper on ‘eBay as a labourer of love: A study of collectors, their collections and their relationship with eBay’ and Geoghegan’s exploration of ‘virtual spaces of telecommunications enthusiasm’, building on our original working paper ‘Virtual radiophile’, which became a chapter in Routledge’s Everyday eBay. Our initial working paper contributed to understandings of virtual collecting. Our chapter in Everyday eBay provides a distinctive U.K. perspective on eBay and collecting, and the reworking of the material geographies of collecting cultures. In addition, users have been involved in the project from the outset, because of the high proportion of users on the project steering group – including BT, Internet Stamps, Near Mint (an eBay rival) and Royal Mail. Parcel Force have critically engaged with our results on eBay’s impact on real networks, particularly eBay users’ call for further integration of eBay and Royal Mail as part of the checkout system and the “fulfilment infrastructure” (see Wrigley, Lowe and Currah, 2002: 188) of the eBay purchase, including automatic booking of a Parcel Force collection, which concurs with their future developments. Internet Stamps, a collectables dealer/manufacturer, are using the results of our project to inform their business strategy. One director of the company noted that our report was particularly important in justifying her strong commitment to customer service and having very knowledgeable staff in relation to stamps and covers – which made them a trusted and valued intermediary, and more resistant to having their trade taken away or disintermediated in an Internet era. There was also a critical engagement with the results on eBay as a source of self‐employment by Ian Stobie, representing PRIME (a voluntary organisation concerned with promoting employment for the 50+ group), who was interested in the finding that some of the eBay traders were encountering intense competition and considering setting up a static e‐commerce presence. Finally, our self‐organized (Colchester 1995) Cultures of eBay conference, which involved the dissemination of our papers on changing collecting practices and secondly on the ‘policing’ of ‘inexpert’ collecting knowledges 32 RES‐000‐23‐0433 from eBay pages within the space of an online discussion forum, involved the attendance of and questions from two representatives from eBay, as well as 2CV Research (a commercial research agency). In terms of media ‘outputs’ from the project, we feel that the project’s main impact has been to challenge and contextualise the media’s ‘sensationalist’ constructions of eBay (such as eBay addiction) by providing case study examples and more ‘mundane’ eBay experiences, and trying to widen their agenda to thinking about eBay’s wider impact upon society. 8. Future research priorities Two key areas of future research priority have emerged from the eBay case study. The first involves thinking through issues of product life spans and the impact mediators such as eBay could have for increasing product life spans for multiple owners. Various strands of our research have revealed that eBay is increasing product life spans and also pushing some commodities (such as DVDs) more quickly into new cycles of exchange – between multiple owners. Gregson and Crewe (2003) state that second‐hand worlds pose immense difficulty in providing acceptable gifts. Yet on eBay, unwanted or redundant gifts are quickly being sold on, complete with original wrapper or tags, to become someone else’s gift. eBay also moves second‐
hand worlds beyond the charity shop, retro shop or car boot sale – it also facilitates the exchange of large ‘white goods’ items such as fridges or washing machines, which are mostly absent from these spaces because of difficulties of transport, testing and their mundane design. RME is currently a co‐applicant with Dr Andrew King of the University of Bristol for an application to the ESRC’s seminar competition ‘Developing a framework for interdisciplinary research communication through a seminar series on sustainable product reuse’. This uses a technique known as ‘Delphi’ to examine “stakeholder” opinions (cf. Murphy, 2002) in sustainability decisions in product design. It is also expected that this area will be subject to a Responsive Mode application to the EPSRC, with an emphasis on extending the life of ‘technological’ consumer durables and white goods. The second future research priority area emerging from the eBay case study involves applying some of the ‘lessons from eBay’ to the physical auction arena. Whilst physical auctions attract remote bidding by telephone and sometimes Internet proxy bidding, these often prove difficult to integrate into the physical act of the auction, and bring its legitimacy into question. It is the intention of the PI to develop a project proposal with Professor Christian Heath of King’s College, London, which examines the issue of integrating remote bidding into the physical auction. At the present time, supplied item descriptions are not often binding and “fulfilment” of the purchase may be carried out by a separate packing company divorced from any chain of accountability. This may be an EPSRC proposal or business‐funded. 33 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Appendix 1: Tables Table 1: Research activity 1 ‐ observation of eBay site eBay categories [Collectables] Animation Subcategories Animation art Animation characters Production art Other animation art Betty Boop Dr Seuss Hanna‐Barbera Japanese animation Snoopy/ peanuts The Simpsons Toy story Wallace and Gromit Warner Brothers Winnie the Pooh Other animation char Japanese/ Anime Apothecary/chemist Asian/ ethnographic Sub‐subcategories Sub‐sub‐subcat Obs dates 26/04/2004 26/04/2004; 27/04/2004; 14/03/2005; 6/03/2005 15/4/2004; 19/04/2004; 26/04/2004; 06/04/2004 Africa Americas China India Japan Oceania Other Autographs 06/04/2004 01/04/2004; 04/04/2004; 21/03/2005; 22/03/2005 Badges and patches Advertising Celebrity Characters Clubs Enamel Golly Hard Rock Café Holiday/ Butlins Military Novelty Pewter Police Scouts/ guides Sport Transport Other 08/04/2004 Breweriana/drinks Advertising Bar items Bottles Drinkware/ glasses Guiness Paper/ labels Other Boy scouts 14/05/2004; 17/05/2004; 19/05/2004; 20/05/2004; 21/05/2004; 27/05/2004; 28/05/2004.
08/04/2004 Girl guides Clubs and associations 34 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Masonic Other Decorative ornaments/ plates Border Bossons Bradford Exchange Colour box Danbury mint David Winter Enesco Halcyon days Hamilton Harmony kingdom Leonardo Lilliput lane Pendelfin Regency fine arts Robert Harrop World studios Other decorative brands Unbranded objects 14/04/2004 ‐
19/04/03 Jukeboxes 07/04/2004 Knives/ swords Commemorative Dagger Pocket Sword Other 08/04/2004 Militaria Ancient/ Medieval 19th Century World war I Word war II Post‐war Surplus Other 18/05/2004 Radio/ Telephony Phonographs Radio Telephone Other radio/ telephony 26/03/2004; 30/03/2004 06/04/2004; 07/04/2004; 14/04/2004 Science Fiction Weird stuff Babylon 5 Buffy the vampire slayer Dr Who Star Wars Star Trek X Files Other science fiction 11/04/2005 Not that odd Slightly unusual Unusual Nearly really weird Really weird Totally bizarre [Art and antiques] Antiques (Pre ‐1900) Antiquities Asian/ Ethnographic Ancient British Asian/Mesopotamian Egyptian Greek Roman Other Antiquities African American Chinese 18/04/2005; 20/04/2005 08/06/2005
Jade/ Hardstone Porcelain/ China 35 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Snuff bottles Other Chinese Indian Japanese Netsuke Porcelain Other Japanese Oceanian Other Asian/ Ethnographic Clocks Mantle/ Carriage Longcase/ Grandfather Wall Other Clocks 01/06/2005 Fabric/ Textiles Embroidery Fabric Lace/ Crochet/ Doilies Linens Quilts Samplers Tapestries Other Fabric/ Textiles Maps Antiques (Post ‐1900) Asian/ Ethnographic 03/06/2005
Africa Asia Europe Latin America/ Caribbean Middle East North America Oceania Other Maps 12/11/2004 As previous Clocks 01/06/2005 Maps As previous Art Digital Art Drawings Pre‐1900 1901‐1950 Paintings Acrylic Pre‐1950 1951‐Now Oil Pre‐1900 1901‐1950 1951‐Now Watercolour/ Gouache Pre‐1900 1901‐1950 1951‐Now 29/06/2005 Art/ Photography 12/11/2004 03/06/2005 Auto/ Biography Childrenʹs Fiction History Illustrated Military/ War Religion/ Spirituality Science/ Technology Travel/ Exploration Other Antiquarian Books Automotive Books, Comics & Magazines Other Paintings 04/07/2005
Clasic cars Antiquarian Books Novels Plays Poetry Other Antiquarian Lit 36 RES‐000‐23‐0433 First Editions Fiction Signed Unsigned Non ‐Fiction Art Glass Signed Antique (Pre‐1900) Pottery, Porcelain & Glass Glass Art Deco British Cranberry/ Ruby European Paperweights Stained Glass Other Art Glass Stamps Glassware Great Britain Commonwealth European Rest of the World Philately/ Postal History Replicas/ Reproductions Thematics Consumer electronics Collectables and vintage Clothing and accessories Carnival Contemporary Glass Crystal/ Cut Glass Pressed Glass Pyrex Vaseline Waterford Other Glassware 02/06/2005 03/06/2005 Vintage Jewellery & Watches Vintage & Antique Jewellery Coins 10/06/2005 09/06/2005 Pre 1837 09/06/2005 Victorian (1837‐1901) Art Nouveau (1895 ‐1910) Edwardian (1901 ‐1910) Art Deco (1915 ‐1935) Retro (1940s) 1950s ‐1970s Costume Other Vintage Jewellery 26/05/2005 Ancient English Commemorative Maundy Sets/ Coins 26/05/2005 Banknotes Bullion/ Bars Coins Pre‐1837 Victorian (1837‐1901) Edwardian (1901 ‐1910) Art Deco (1915 1935) Retro (1940s) 1950s ‐1970s Other Costume Jewellery 37 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Toys and games Proof Sets/ Coins Scottish European World Collections/ Bulk Lots Novelty/ Replica Publications Supplies/ Equipment Historical Medals/ Medallions Share/ Bond Certificates Action figures and accessories Star Wars Beanies & Bean Bag Diecast & Vehicles Fast Food & Cereal Toys Harry Potter Pokemon Scalextric & Slot Car Soft Toys Steam Toy Soldiers TV & Movie Character Toys Vintage Toys Dolls & Bears Wooden toys Bears 26/05/2005 13/06/2005 Vintage (1977‐89) NeoClassic (1990 ‐98) Prequels (1999 ‐Now) Puppets Robots & Space Toys Tin & Friction Wind ‐up Accessories Antique Artist Bad Taste Bears Burberry Care Bears Cherished Teddies Deanʹs Forever Friends Gund Me To You Merrythought Paddington Peter Fagan Russ Steiff Other bears 15/06/2005 Current Retired Antiques and art Art deco 24/05/05 & 25/05/05 Collectables Vintage/ Retro 23/05/2005 38 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Table 2: Research activity 2 ‐ focus group sessions Unique identifier 2‐1‐2704 Type of group (eBay use) New users and lurkers & non‐
registered browsers (science park)
Pseudonyms [BM] Brett [TM] Tom [DD] Diana [ND] Nigella [VR] Veronica [RD] Dervin 2‐2‐1205 Experienced users (university)
[C] Crystal [F] Ferdinand [A] Anghus [K] Katherine 2‐3‐1905 Experienced users (science park)
[M] Mitch [T] Terry [J] James [C] Cathy [L] Laura 2‐4‐2105 Mixed users (university) [PL] Patrick [RW] Rory Personal details (self described) British, research student, 20s Date of focus group 27/04/2004 Scottish, Business Developmemt, 40s GB, research consultant, 40s USA, researcher, 20s Greek, researcher, 30s Welsh, computer programmer, 20s Black British, student, 19 Mixed parentage, student, 20s White British, student, 20s White, student, 40s Caucasian, researcher, 40s Chinese, operations manager, 40s Caucasian, engineer, 50s Caucasian, researcher, 30s Caucasian, interaction designer, 30s British, student, 20s British, student, 20s 12/05/2004 19/05/2004 21/05/2004 39 RES‐000‐23‐0433 [KS] Karl [KM] Kieran [RF] Rea 2‐5‐2805 Experienced users (university)
[J] Jim [S] Selena [C] Carla [RM] Rosie 2‐6‐0306 Mixed users (science park) [A] Alistair [M] Morley [AS] Akashi [AC] Adrienne [N] Nadia 2‐7‐1706 New users & lurkers (science park)
[M] Mark [F] Frank [MB] Mathias [RC] Rachel [A] Anthony British, student, 30s White Irish, student, 20s White British, University staff, 30s English, IT 28/05/2004 consultant, 40s English, PhD student, 30s English, theatre sister, 40s British, student support, 40s UK, lecturer, 50s British, student, 3/06/2004 40s British, researcher, 20s British, solution designer, 30s British, business consultant, 30s English, graphic 17/06/2004 designer, 20s White British, “prof”, 50s British, engineer, 20s British, designer, 20s Greek, PhD student, 30s 40 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Table 3: Research activity 3 ‐ researchers as buyers and sellers Unique identifier 3‐1‐2111 3‐2‐0512 3‐3‐1710 Pseudonyms 3‐4‐2212 Derek 3‐5‐2410 John 3‐6‐0512 Daniel 3‐7‐2111 Craig 3‐8‐2402 3‐9‐2402 Antonia Julie 3‐10‐3009 Christine 3‐11‐2002 Judy 3‐12‐0601 3‐13‐1211 Robin Kaitlin 3‐14‐0411 3‐15‐2301 Diane Francis 3‐16‐2011 3‐17‐2310 3‐18‐0311 3‐19‐1305 3‐20‐0711 3‐21‐2504 Jane Katherine Louise Margaret Philippa Shaun Ross Kate and Bill Charles Description of item B&O radio c.1960s Deco clock c.1930s Boxed minerals c.1910 Westminster radio c.1940s Sanyo transistor radio c.1960s Bush Merlin radio c.1970s Mackintosh Suncatcher c.1990s Evans jumper Long black velvet skirt Art deco satin glass vase c.1930s Sunburst dressing table set c.1930s Jobling glass bowl Deco Wall lights c.1930s Dolly shoes Customised My Little Pony Navy bow jacket Gap shirt Pearl necklace Fitness magazines Gerry Weber top Bo Selecta DVD Researcher buying or selling Selling RME Selling RME Selling RME Date of listing 21/11/2004 05/12/2004 17/10/2004 Selling RME 22/12/2004 Selling RME 24/10/2004 Selling RME 05/12/2004 Selling RME 21/11/2004 Selling AJH Selling AJH 24/02/2005 24/02/2005 Buying RME 30/09/2004 Buying RME 20/02/2005 Buying RME Buying RME 06/01/2005 12/11/2004 Buying AJH Buying AJH 04/11/2004 23/01/2005 Buying AJH Buying AJH Buying AJH Buying AJH Buying AJH Buying AJH 20/11/2004 23/10/2004 03/11/2004 09/05/2005 07/11/2004 25/04/2005 41 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Table 4: Research activity 4 ‐ interviews with the vintage radio community Unique Pseudonym identifier 4‐1‐1703 John 4‐2‐0807 Arthur 4‐3‐0807 Philip 4‐4‐1207 George 4‐5‐1307 Henry 4‐6‐1407 Martin 4‐7‐1507 Jason 4‐8‐1507 Gregory 4‐9‐1907 Peter 4‐10‐2207 Derek 4‐11‐2207 Allan 4‐12‐1909 Ian 4‐13‐0510 Andrew 4‐14‐0610 Sid Relevant eBay usage details personal details Radio dealer, 50s, Mostly sells, esp. items North West of uncertain value Radio collector, Mostly sells restored 70s, retired, radios on eBay Yorkshire Radio and audio Buyer and seller – collector, 40s, looking for missing East Anglia items and selling surplus Radio dealer, 60s, Well known eBay South Coast radio/ audio dealer, also buys eBay items he can resell Radio collector, Buying unusual items 50s, Home and selling ‘peripheral’ Counties items Buying particular Radio collector, manufacturers, selling 50s, North specialist items e.g. test London equipment Radio collector, Mostly buying items 30s, East Anglia from a particular manufacturer Radio collector, Buying ‘exotic’ radios 40s, East Anglia on the global market Radio collector, Buying unusual items, selling surplus 40s, Home collection Counties Radio collector, Sold most of his 60s, retired, South collection on eBay East Radio collector, Mostly buying items 50s, South West from one manufacturer Radio collector, Mostly selling as 40s, London moving house Radio collector, Buying small, low value items, selling 40s, West of England service data Dealer and radio Mostly sells items on collector, 60s, eBay he regards as ‘the London cream’ or surplus to regular clients’ wants Date 17/03/2004 8/07/2004 8/07/2004 12/07/2004 13/07/2004 14/07/2004 15/07/2004 15/07/2004 19/07/2004 22/07/2004 22/07/2004 19/09/2004 05/10/2004 06/10/2004 42 RES‐000‐23‐0433 4‐15‐0710 Richard Radio collector, 50s, Home Counties 4‐16‐0810 Brian Radio collector, 40s, East Anglia 4‐17‐1111 Oscar TV collector, 40s, Central England Vintage audio dealer, 60s, ‘retired’, East Anglia 4‐18‐2102 Tom Buys radios and nostalgic radio items from his childhood, sells surplus collection Buys rare items from UK and abroad, sells surplus collection and for other people Equally buys (TV‐
related) and sells Buys for his own collection (American radios), sells items surplus to collection 07/10/2004 08/10/2004 11/11/2004 21/02/2005 Table 5: Research activity 5 ‐ interviews with the stamp/ cover collecting community Unique Pseudonym identifier 5‐1‐2109 Gordon 5‐2‐0510 Keith 5‐3‐0710 Eric 5‐4‐1110 Wendy 5‐5‐1210 Wilf 5‐6‐1810 Gerard Relevant personal details Stamp and cover collector and dealer, 50s, Wales Cover collector, 40s, Yorkshire eBay usage details Buying only, looking for bargains and misdescribed signed covers Mostly selling (surplus collection), but collects 1960s covers and celebrities Cover collector, eBay buyer only – 40s, North West “quirky” rare covers and signed military covers Stamp and Non eBay user, buys cover collector, mail order and 50s, Home auctions by post. Counties eBay buyer only, Cover collector, especially interested in 40s, London Concorde covers area Stamp and eBay buyer ‐ GB and cover collector, Commonwealth covers 40s, South West and filling gaps, looking for bargains Date interviewed 21/09/2004 5/10/04 7/10/04 11/10/2004 12/10/2004 18/10/2004 43 RES‐000‐23‐0433 5‐7‐0811 Frederic 5‐8‐1011 Clive 5‐9‐1511 Bill 5‐10‐1503 Neil 5‐11‐1603 Henry 5‐12‐1603 Jeffrey Stamp and cover collector, 40s, East Anglia Mostly buying – collects postmarks of London and Essex, selling a little Stamp and Buying Rotary cover collector, International items 50s, Home Cinderella philately Counties. and other rare lots, selling unwanted items from job lots Cover collector Mostly selling surplus and dealer, 60s, collection/ stock, North West. buying unappreciated bargains. Buying only, buying Stamp and missing years of his cover collector, collection and 50s, East Anglia ‘bargains’ Cover collector, Buying only, collects 40s, London ‘rarer’ first day covers area with special hand stamps e.g. Buckingham Palace Stamp and Buys signed covers as cover collector, film memorabilia, sells 20s, Yorkshire film memorabilia and films 8/11/2004 10/11/2004 15/11/2004 15/3/2005 16/3/2005 16/3/2005 Table 6: Research activity 6 ‐ experience diaries – paper diaries, offline Word diaries or Blogs and follow‐up interviews (where necessary) Unique identifier Pseudonym 7‐1‐1807 Blog Valerie 7‐2‐2507 Blog Alan 7‐3‐2809 Follow‐up interview 7‐4‐2809 Alan Valerie Relevant personal details Formerly worked in building society, 40s, South West Trained textile designer, 30s, South West Trained textile designer, 30s, South West Formerly eBay usage details Date of first entry eBay seller – vintage jewellery 18/07/2005 eBay seller – vintage textiles 25/07/2005 eBay seller – vintage textiles 28/09/2005 eBay seller – 28/09/2005 44 RES‐000‐23‐0433 Follow‐up interview 7‐5‐1810 Blog Debbie 7‐6‐1910 Blog Jacob 7‐7‐1910 Blog Irving 7‐8‐1910 Word diary Barry 7‐9‐1910 Blog Todd 7‐10‐2010 Blog Adrian 7‐11‐2010 Blog Dermot 7‐12‐2110 Blog Gwen worked in vintage building jewellery society, 40s, South West BT worker, Selling human unwanted baby resources, baby items, daughter comparing eBay to high street in buying BT worker, Buying rare Essex postcards – Southend and Westcliff Buying for HP worker, others (family, team leader, work London colleagues), selling unwanted gadget/ phone items BT worker, eBay seller, data selling trading transformation, cards home counties. BT worker, Buying items human because cheaper resources, online, stopped Yorkshire. selling due to bid shielding BT worker, Buying Stephen software King novels, engineer, 30s, selling NE England unwanted household items and attempt to start eBay business Selling ‘Magic HP worker, The Gathering’ team leader, cards, buys London computer items BT worker, Looking to buy sales cheaper than in the shops, using 18/10/2005 19/10/2005 19/10/2005 19/10/2005 19/10/2005 20/10/2005 20/10/2005 21/10/2005 45 RES‐000‐23‐0433 7‐13‐0211 Word diary Heather eBay seller eBay for gifts, selling things for others Selling second‐
hand clothing, buying for work colleague 2/11/2005 Table 7: Research activity 7 ‐ interviews with participants using eBay to generate the majority of their earned income Unique identifier 7‐3‐2809 Pseudonym 7‐4‐2809 Valerie 10‐1‐2607 Rich 10‐2‐0908 Donald Venture capitalist, London 5‐9‐1511 Bill Cover collector and dealer, 60s, North West 4‐4‐1207 George Radio dealer, 60s, South Coast 4‐14‐0610 Sid Dealer and radio collector, 60s, London 11‐1‐2007 Helen Partner of full‐time eBayer, Greg, young family, professional employment Alan Relevant personal details Trained textile designer, 30s, South West Formerly worked in building society, 40s, South West Venture capitalist, London eBay usage details Date of interview eBay seller – vintage 28/09/2005 textiles eBay seller – vintage 28/09/2005 jewellery eBay seller (manager) – all categories – eBay drop shop eBay seller (manager) – all categories – eBay drop shops (chain) Mostly selling surplus collection/ stock, buying unappreciated bargains Well known eBay radio/ audio dealer, also buys eBay items he can resell Mostly sells items on eBay he regards as ‘the cream’ or surplus to regular clients’ wants Helen identifies eBay stock at physical auctions, writes description, Greg lists and packs 26/07/2005 09/08/2005 15/11/2004 12/07/2004 06/10/2004 20/07/2005 46 RES‐000‐23‐0433 11‐2‐2807 Tamsin 2‐4‐2105 Patrick Household breadwinner, early 20s, South West, works part‐time in PO British, student, 20s Vintage clothing and ‘fancy dress’ seller 28/07/2005 Used to sell free 21/05/2004 cinema posters, now sells CDs and unwanted gifts/ household items Table 8: Other interviews: under‐18 eBay users and charity shops Unique identifier Pseudonym Relevant personal details eBay usage details Maintenance engineer, 40s Web designer, 40s Has own account Shares account with children Browses on Mum’s account Browses on Mum’s account Sells on eBay for shop Setting up for eBay selling 9‐1‐2605 Mark Todd Geraldine Todd Susan Todd At school, 13 Rachel Todd At school, 10 8‐1‐2406 East Suffolk charity shop West Suffolk town charity shop Charity shop manager Charity shop manager 8‐2‐2406 Date of interview 26/05/2005 24/06/2005 24/06/2005 References ACNielsen (2001), ‘Global Internet universe grows by 6.8 million individuals to 379 million in March: Nielsen//NetRatings’ [Online]. 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(1998) Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge). Wilson, D. (2005) Make money on eBay UK (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London). Woolgar, S. (2002) Virtual Society? Techology, Cyberbole, Reality (Oxford University Press, Oxford). Wrigley, N.; Lowe, M. and Currah, A. (2002) ‘Progress report: Retailing and e‐tailing’, Urban Geography, 23(2), 180‐197. Zook, M. (2005) The Geography of the Internet Industry (Blackwell, Oxford). Zukin, S. (2004) Point of Purchase: How Shopping Changed American Culture (Routledge, London). 51 Your 21-day eBay Experience Diary:
University of Essex eBay Research
Your experience counts
Essentially, our aim for this diary is that it should capture your day-today experiences with using eBay. This might be in browsing, buying or
selling. It might involve your online experiences – looking at the site,
reading e-mails – or your experiences offline – such as collecting
something from the seller in person or receiving something through the
post. These are just examples, however, as any experiences you wish to
share, are worthy of note. We are interested in understanding day-today occurrences related to your eBay use and your account of them, as
this level of detail will supplement our current high level understanding of
the ‘eBay experience’, obtained through our interviews and focus groups
to date.
What to record?
Please record any notable experiences (online or offline) that you’ve had
when using eBay (and/or associated services, e.g. Paypal and postal
providers) as a buyer or seller. For example, instances when you have
been annoyed or frustrated, seen something of interest (e.g. either the
item itself, the seller’s description of it, or comments on a community
board), or been pleasantly surprised for whatever reason.
We’d also value it very much if you could copy and paste the web
address of the pages you’re commenting on, if relevant – see figure
below.
To copy and paste a web address (or any text), right hand mouse
click on the web address, which will highlight the text, then select
copy from the options box (or manually highlight and then click and
hold ctrl+c). Click and hold Ctrl+v will then paste the address to the
text area determined by the cursor.
Alternatively, tell us about a notable item or description by using the
‘email to a friend’ link (see below) and send them to either one of us,
with a note as to why the page is of interest and/ or any diary entry it
might be associated with.
Using the ‘email to a friend’ link indicated above, feel free to email
item pages to either [email protected] or [email protected].
If you would prefer, you could just email the item number (copy and
paste it, as before, by highlighting the number) or the title of a thread, if
you are referring to a community page, with a comment regarding its
significance.
Areas of particular interest
Although interested in the total breadth of people’s eBay experiences, we
are particularly interested in eBay experiences related to knowledge,
identity and community. Therefore, in particular, please record any dayto-day experiences associated with these concepts. The examples below
are purely illustrative, and not intended to present an exhaustive
indication of what to capture.
Knowledge
•
Do you ever offer any knowledge to other eBay users, e.g. to
point out an incorrect listing or when the listing asks for help in
identifying something? What is the response from the other eBay
user to this offer of knowledge?
•
Have you gained any knowledge about your buying or selling
area through using eBay? Please give examples.
•
[For sellers] What is your approach to listing items – in terms of
description and photography? How much knowledge of the item
do you like to present and how do you present it – e.g.
information about the manufacturer, citing reference books or
price guides.
Identity
•
Recognition of familiar eBay users on the site? Why do you
recognise them? Do they bid against you (when buying), are
they a competitor or do they sell similar things to yourself? Do
they ever keep trying to sell the same item? Have you seen any
user ids which you particularly notice because they are, for
example, amusing, clever, silly, boring or rude.
•
Do you look at About Me pages? For what reasons? What do you
see as the value, if any, of such pages? Do you have an about
me page and how did you decide what information to include?
•
Do you ever explore other eBay user’s buying and selling
histories through their feedback profiles? Why do you look at
their histories? Do you ever form a view of them as a person or
as a collector from this? What kind of image have you formed
and why?
Community
•
Do you ever look at the community pages? Why do you look?
Do you ever post to them – if yes, why? If you do, how often
and which ones do you visit? Why those ones? Is there a
particular time of day when you tend to visit the community
pages and why? Do you talk to any particular eBay users on a
regular basis? What do you post, if you do? Do you offer
knowledge/advice? About what?
•
Do you feel part of an eBay community? Why? Why not? In
what ways? Give examples of instances which do/don’t make
you feel part of an eBay community?
•
When buying or selling, is there any social chat between you
and the buyer/ seller? What sorts of things do you talk about?
Does it make you feel more part of an eBay community or
not?
How to record?
There are a number of options for recording your experience diaries,
designed to make keeping records fit in with your day-to-day lives. We
have made a few suggestions below. However, if you would prefer to
capture your experiences using a different method, please contact us
with your suggestion and we will accommodate your wishes, if possible1.
Using blogger.com
The easiest way to record your diary is online via blogger.com. For those
unfamiliar with the term, 'Blog' is short for 'web log' and Blogs are
usually presented in journal style with a new entry each day. Blogger has
the facility to easily add html links2. Just copy and paste them [ctrl+c
then ctrl+v] into your diary entry.
If you choose this option, let us know and we can create a Blog account
for you that only you and us can gain access to. If you'd like to keep the
Blog afterwards, we'll let you know how to change the password on the
account.
Once
registered,
you
can
http://www.blogger.com/start
access
and
your
Blog
entering
your
by
going
username
password (as supplied), and clicking on the link under 'BLOG NAME':
1
Technical knowledge and download restrictions may make some suggestions not
possible for us to accommodate. However, we will do our best to be flexible.
to
and
To make a new entry, click on 'create a new post’ – see below.
Add a title for your entry and then type away in the text box. Cut and
paste html addresses or references to web pages here. Then click
'publish post' and it will appear and be saved on your blog – see figure
below.
2
Links to web pages which you can click on to go directly there.
Formatted: Font: Verdana
Using a Word-based diary
For those of you without Broadband, you may want to still use the
computer, but 'offline.' We'll email you a Word document that you can
type into. Keep saving it as you go along, and cut and paste web
addresses into it, as before.
Please specify the time of diary entries, indicating whether am or pm (or
use 24-hour), and type away – all comments are welcome. Also, please
indicate whether an entry is associated with an emailed eBay page or
include the web address. As you type, the table will automatically expand,
as appropriate, to accommodate your text.
Using paper diaries
Alternatively, we can send you a traditional paper diary to fill in (A4 or
A5 – the choice is yours) which contains prompts in the back. Just record
the date and time of notable instances and write away. With this method,
however, it could prove more difficult to record web pages. Accordingly,
this is where eBay’s 'email to a friend' option would come in handy –
please indicate why the page is of interest, and tell us the date/time of
the entry it's associated with. If the page isn't an item page, just cut and
paste the web address into an email (with the date/time of the
associated entry) to [email protected] or [email protected].
Please specify the time of diary entries, indicating whether am or pm (or
use 24-hour) and, if possible, ensure that each new day is recorded on a
new page. Also indicate whether an entry is associated with an emailed
eBay page or include the web address. Just write away – all comments
are valid.
Please e-mail Rebecca Ellis [email protected] or Anna Haywood
[email protected] if you have any further questions.
CONSENT TO USE INFORMATION GIVEN IN THE
FOCUS GROUP
Name of Research Project: Virtually second-hand: Internet auction sites as
spaces of knowledge performance
Research Institution: University of Essex
Contact telephone number: 01473 632240
Explanation:
This form is necessary in order to protect your rights in the research process,
and has become best practice for qualitative research. It is also necessary in
order for us to deposit our material with QUALIDATA - who preserve
qualitative data and make it available to other researchers for reuse.
Depositing our data with QUALIDATA is a stipulation of our project award.
Information:
I have been given information about the research project and the way in
which my contribution will be used.
My contribution will be kept safely and securely with access only to those with
the permission of the researcher.
I understand that I can withdraw my consent at any time by contacting the
researcher.
Please tick either:
I give my permission for the interview, which I am about to give/ have
given for the above project to be used for research purposes only (including
research publications and reports) with strict preservation of anonymity.
I give my permission for the interview, which I am about to give/ have
given for the above project to be used for research purposes only (including
research publications and reports) without strict preservation of anonymity.
I hereby assign the copyright in my contribution to Rebecca Ellis and Anna
Haywood (the researchers).
Signed_____________________ Date _____________
(Interviewee)
Signed_____________________ Date _____________
(Researcher)
Interview schedule for charity sellers
1. Where did your motivation to first sell on eBay come from? Head office/
individual branch?/ What made you decide to try and sell items on eBay?
2. Have you had any interactions with other stores who are selling on eBay?
e.g. Oxford, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Depot? Have you picked up any tips
from their experiences?
3. Do you know if Oxfam has tried to use any other Internet auction sites?/ If
so, who? Why eBay?
Selling practices - charity shop to eBay
1. What items do you want to sell on eBay/ are selling on eBay? Are they
particular types of item?/ Objects rather than clothes?/ Specific types of
clothes - with tags, designer?/ Rare, expensive or collectable items?/ Are
you cherry picking the 'good' items, or are these things which haven't sold
in shops?
2. Are there things you won't sell on eBay?/ What are these and why not?/
What characteristics do they have?/ Clothing and objects.
3. What did you previously do with the items you're selling on eBay which are
rare and expensive?/ Did you send them to physical auctions?
4. Do you try to sell the items you are listing/ want to list on eBay in the
charity shop first?
5. Do you ever sell 'new' items on eBay - e.g. fair trade items, items from
stock?
6. What are the origins of the items - all donations? Other sources?
7. What happens to books - sell centrally through head office?/ What
happens to CDs - ever thought of selling on Amazon?
Identity
1. What is your eBay identity?/ How did you choose it?/ Do you have an
about me page?/ If yes, what does it say? If not, why not?
2. Do you feel that the shop is acquiring any form if identity or reputation for
selling specific things on eBay?
3. How do you authenticate that you are a charity on eBay?/
4. Are Oxfam going to be listed on eBay's charity section?
Value
1. How do you decide on what the eBay start prices should be?/ Do they
have a relation to what you would start them at in the charity shop? Do you
use an unknown reserve price?
2. Who tends to evaluate the items which come in and place a value on
them?/ What experience do they have - experience in collectables or
clothing etc?
3. Have any of the eBay items fetched higher prices than expected?/ Why do
you think that was?
4. Have any eBay items not sold?/ What do you do with them then - back to
the shop?
5. What do you generally do with items that don't sell?/ Go to other charity
shops?/ Go abroad?/ Throw away?/ Which items do you throw away when
you receive them?/ Why?
Approach to eBay selling
1. How do you construct the item pages?/ How do you take photos?/ What do
you show?/ How do you describe the item?/ Terms and conditions?/ How
do you describe the role of the charity?
2. Do you sell only in the UK or overseas too?
3. How do you think using eBay has/ will changed your business?
4. Do you think it will discourage people coming into the shop - if the good
items have been sold first?
5. What do the people who donate think about their items being sold on
eBay?/ Do they know?
6. Does anyone donate money to you from auctioning items on eBay
themselves - private individuals selling on Oxfam's behalf?/ Do you think
anybody buys from you on eBay because you are a charity - philanthropic
motive/ ethical consumption?
Internet
1. Does the shop have Broadband access, or are you selling using dial up?/
Using turbo lister?/ Do you think you would list more if you had
Broadband?
2. Do you have a specific volunteer who manages the eBay selling?
3. Is it done during shop opening times or in the evenings?
Financial
1. What payment methods do you accept?/ Paypal?/ Cheque?
2. Have you had any bad experiences with payment methods?/ What are
these?
3. How do you think payment services could be improved?
Postage
1. What are your experiences of the post?/ What are the good experiences?/
What are the bad experiences?/ Buyer experiences or seller experiences?/
2. How do you think the postal service could be improved?/ What services
would you like to see?
3. Have you ever had anything broken or lost in the post?/ How was this
resolved with the Post Office and buyer?/ Did this make you reluctant to
buy things which had to be posted and/ or are bulky or fragile?
4. Would you like a service particularly for fragile items?/ Would you like
more or better item tracking?
5. Would you like better access to packaging materials?/ What sort?/ Do you
use any of the Post Office's packing materials?/ Why?/ Why not?
6. What are your experiences with courier firms?
7. How would you feel about pricing which is done by volume and not
weight?
8. As a seller, do you mention the postage fee on your item description?/
Why?/ Why not?/ Do you add a margin to your p&p charges?/ Why?/ Why
not?
9. As a seller, do you think about the difficulty of wrapping and posting before
listing?/ Does this ever put you off?
10. Have you delivered items by hand?/ What were these?/ Why did you do
that?
Focus group interview schedule
Experience
Round robin
1. How did you first hear about the eBay Site? (i.e., friend, family, search
engine, advertisement, etc.)
2. Are you a registered user?/ Did you browse the site before you were a
registered user?/ Why didn't you register straight away?/ What were you
browsing?/ What made you register?
3. How long have you been using the eBay Site and what do you use it for?/
Do you regard yourself as a new user ('newbie') or an experienced user?/
4. How often do you visit or browse the eBay site?/ For how long at a time?/
[For very frequent users] Would you describe yourself as an 'addict'?/ Why do
you use the site that frequently?/ If you use it frequently, does this impact
upon your home life?/ What would you be doing if you weren't on eBay?/
What has suffered - TV watching, exercise etc?
5. Do you buy or sell on eBay? Do you do both? Which came first - buying
or selling?
6. What is the main category on the eBay site in which your items are bought
or sold? /Buyers: Do you tend to search and browse for items through the
categories specified by eBay, or do you prefer the search box?/ Sellers: Do
you list your items in only one category or in multiple categories?/ Why?/
7. What are you doing when on the site - browsing, bidding, waiting for
auctions to end, listing items for sale, checking progress of items (both those
selling & those bidding for), using community pages?/ Do you watch the end
of the auction countdown?
______________________________________________________________
8. Has how you use eBay changed over time? E.g. selling now, whereas only
buying before? Different bidding strategies over time? Buying/ selling more
or less?/ Do you 'snipe'? Either manually or using software?/
9. What matters most about the site to you?/ What do you like best about
the site?/ What do you like best about its design?/ What is the best thing
about using eBay?
10. What do you least like about the site?/ What do you like least about its
design?
11. Have you had any bad experiences when using eBay - what are they?/
What are the worst aspects about using eBay?
12. How do you perceive the role of eBay and Paypal?
13. Why do you think eBay is so successful?
14. Has your life changed since you began visiting the eBay site? If so, in
what way?
15. What is the most unique, weird or otherwise unusual item you have
bought or sold on eBay?
Buyers:
16. What do you buy on eBay?/ Why do you buy it there rather than in a
'physical' arena - shop, car boot sale etc?/ Do you repeat buy the same sorts
of things from eBay?/ What are these? Why is eBay a good venue for buying
such items?
17. Have you ever got any 'bargains' on eBay?/ Why did the item go
'cheap'?/ Do you have any strategies to get bargains on eBay?
18. How is the eBay experience of buying different from 'physical' buying in
your opinion?
19. Do you buy from abroad?/ Why?
Sellers:
20. What do you sell on eBay?/ How do you acquire the items you sell? e.g.
surplus household, purchased for reselling, selling for a friend, surplus to
collection?
21. Do you sell many items abroad?/ What sort of items? Do you find selling
to non-UK bidders problematic in any way? If so, please specify.
Feedback:
22. Does your feedback profile matter to you?/ Have you had any negative
feedback?/ Why?/ Have you left any negative feedback?/ Why?/ Have you
ever felt like leaving negative feedback but haven't?/ Why?/
23. Do you look at other people's feedback when buying/ selling?/ What are
your thoughts regarding navigating feedback profiles? Is it easy to look at
particular categories of feedback? What would put you off buying/ selling?
24. Is there anything you think would improve the eBay feedback system?
Other e-commerce:
25. Are there any other e-commerce sites you spend as much time on as
eBay?/ What are these and why do you spend time there?
Identity
Round Robin
1. What is your eBay User ID?/ How did you choose it?/ What does it relate
to?/ Does it relate to what you are buying or selling?/ Why?/ Why not?/ Are
you trying to project an image with it?/ What?/ Have you changed your user
ID?/ Why?/ From what?/ Why haven't you changed your user name?/ Is it a
recognisable user name e.g. relates to you or your name?
2. Do you have more than one user ID?/ Why?/ Would you like to have?/
What for?
3. Have you seen any user IDs which you think are cool?/ What are they?/
4. Do you have an 'about me' page?/ Why?/ Why not?/ What do you have on
it?/ What are you trying to say about yourself? Do you peruse other people’s
About Me pages? If so, what attracts you to their ABOUT ME page? Do you
think ABOUT ME pages are a good idea? Why/why not?
______________________________________________________________
5. Do you 'recognise' any of the other eBay users you see on the site?/ Are
these people you know face-to-face?/ Are these people you just know as eBay
users?/ Have you talked to any of them?
6. Do you look at the items other people are buying or selling through
accessing their feedback list? Why do you do this? Why those particular
people?
7. Do you 'identify' with what you buy or sell?/ Is it part of your identity?
Knowledge
1. Do you feel you've gained any knowledge about collectables through
browsing the eBay site?/ What sort of knowledge?
2. Has being an eBay user changed what you buy or altered your tastes in
any way?
3. Has eBay participation altered what you buy when shopping 'physically'?
4. Do you ever offer any knowledge to people about items where there
origins, classification, use or manufacturers are claimed to be unknown?
5. For sellers - what is your approach to describing your item listings?/ Do
you like to write a lot about the history/ provenance of the item?/ How much
knowledge of the item do you like to present?/ How do you take the photos look, background, detail?/ Do you like to show off your knowledge?
6. Do you ever see or buy things which are mislabelled, miss-spelt or marked
as 'unknown,' when you know what they are?
Community
1. Do you ever look at the community pages?/ Do you ever post to them?/
Why/ Why not?/
2. If you do, how often and which ones do you visit?/ Why those ones?/ Do
you talk to any eBay users regularly?/ What are their user names?/ Do you
know the real names of anyone you ‘talk’ to on the site?
3. What do you post?/ Do you offer knowledge/ advice?/ About what?
4. Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/ In what ways?
5. When buying or selling, is there any social chat between you and the
buyer/ seller?/ What sorts of things do you talk about?
6. Have you ever had face-to-face contact with anyone you've met through
eBay? Under what circumstances (e.g. personal collection or delivery, or at an
organised social event (an eyeball)?
Collecting/ consumption
1. Do you consider yourself as a collector? If so, what do you collect? Do
you buy these things on eBay?/ Do you buy them elsewhere too?
2. How much of your eBay buying is collecting?/ Did you start off collecting on
eBay?
2. Has using eBay reduced your amount of 'physical' collecting - going to
antique shops, antiques fairs, car boot sales or charity shops?
3. Do you prefer buying 'physically' or 'virtually' for collectables?/ Why?
5. If you sell, do you sell off surplus items of your collection?
6. If you don't sell your surplus collection on eBay, why is this?
Postal mail
1. What are your experiences of the post?/ What are the good experiences?/
What are the bad experiences?/ Buyer experiences or seller experiences?/
What are your perceptions of the Post Office?
2. How do you think the postal service could be improved?/ What services
would you like to see?
3. Have you ever had anything broken or lost in the post?/ How was this
resolved with the Post Office and seller?/ Did this make you reluctant to buy
things which had to be posted and/ or are bulky or fragile?
4. Would you like a service particularly for fragile items?/ Would you like
more or better item tracking?
5. Sellers - would you like better access to packaging materials?/ What sort?/
Do you use any of the Post Office's packing materials?/ Why?/ Why not?
6. What are your experiences with courier firms?
7. Do you import items from outside the UK?/ Where from?/ What are your
postal/ courier experiences for these?/ How about customs and excise fees/
duty?/ Are you put off from buying outside the UK?/ Why?
8. How would you feel about pricing which is done by volume and not
weight?
9. Does the postal cost put you off buying heavy items?/ Do you only buy
small items?
10. Do you think about the postal cost before buying?/ If so, are you put off
when sellers don't list p&p costs?/ If no p&p costs are listed, do you contact
the seller?
11. As a seller, do you mention the postage fee on your item description?/
Why?/ Why not?/ Do you add a margin to your p&p charges?/ Why?/ Why
not?
12. As a seller, do you think about the difficulty of wrapping and posting
before listing?/ Does this ever put you off?
13. Have you collected or delivered items by hand?/ What were these?/ Why
did you do that?
Financial
1. How do you usually pay/ receive payment for your eBay items?/ Cheque/
credit card/ postal order/ Paypal or other intermediary/ bank transfer/ COD?/
ESCROW/ hidden cash/ Why do you choose this method or methods?
2. Have you had any bad experiences with payment methods?/ What are
these?
3. How do you think payment services could be improved?
4. How do you pay for items bought from abroad?/ Why?/ Have you ever had
to do a bank transfer?/ Why?/ What did you think about this process?
5. How would you feel about the Post Office offering a payment service, and
an ESCROW service - holding money from a buyer until the seller posts the
item?
Internet
1. Where do you look at the eBay site - at home, at work, both?/ Do your
employers mind you looking at the site at work?/ If you look at eBay when at
work, why is this? (e.g. non-work at work, faster connection etc).
2. What type of connection do you have - dial-up, Broadband? Pay as you
go, anytime? Would using eBay encourage you to have Broadband or an
anytime service?
3. Do you bid by text?/ If not, why not?
Income/ self-employment
1. If you are a buyer, how many items do you buy in a month?/ How much
would you say you spend on eBay items in an average month?
2. If you are a seller, how many items do you sell in a month roughly?/ How
much do you earn?/ Is this to supplement a main income?
3. Could you imagine becoming a full-time eBay seller?/ Why?/ Why not?/
How would you categorise your selling - occasional, hobbyist, part-time
business, full-time business?
4. If you are a seller, do you work full-time?/ How do you fit eBay selling
around your full-time job?
Interview schedule for traders
employed through eBay
General intro questions and context
1. How did you first hear about the eBay site? (i.e., friend, family, search
engine, advertisement, etc.) When did you start using it?
2. Which came first - buying or selling? Do you still buy using eBay? Why/ why not?
3. Do you have an 'eBay' shop or do you just sell through the ordinary auction
format?/ Why?/ Are you thinking of having an 'eBay shop' in the future?/ Why?/
Why not?/ If you do have a basic shop, featured shop or anchored shop?/ Why?
4. If you are a ‘drop shop,’ what is the history of your business?/ Why did you
decide to be a drop shop rather than sell items supplied by yourself?/ Do you sell
other people’s items and your own supply?
Self-employment questions
1. How did you come to trade on eBay as your full-time/ part-time job?/
If you are part-time, how do you fit it around other work?/ Are you a
sole trader or are you in a partnership/ employ other people?/ Did you
sell part-time on eBay before going full-time?/ How long have you
been a full-time eBay trader?/ What convinced you into moving to
eBay full-time?/ Do you have any sales outlets other than eBay?/
2. What is the best thing about being an eBay trader for you?/ What
advice would you give to others just starting as eBay traders?
3. What employment did you do previously (if you did) and why did you
switch from that to eBay?/ Is eBay a continuation of what you used to
do or a break from it?/ Does it relate to your hobbies?
4. Was it important to you that you could work flexibly being an eBay
seller?/ Do you have responsibilities at home to fit round?/
5. What is your typical routine on a daily/ weekly basis in terms of selling
vs. doing other things?/ What proportion of your time do you spend
listing v. taking photos/ preparing the item/ wrapping and posting?/
How many items do you list in a typical week?/ How frequently do you
check the progress of your items?
6. Was where you live important in any way as to why you set up as a
full-time eBay trader?/ e.g. geographically remote, cheap stock
available, difficult to find the type of work you wanted?
7. Do you sell many items abroad?/ What sort of items? Do you find
selling to non-UK bidders problematic in any way? If so, please
specify./ Do you offer a returns policy?/
8. What was the most difficult thing about going over to be a full-time
eBay trader?/ What set up costs/ needs did you have?/ Did you seek
out any IT training?/ Can you do everything you need to do technically,
or do you still seek advice from others?/ Do you think there should be
any start up help for eBay traders - either in terms of training by a
third party (not eBay) or help buying equipment?
9. What is the worst part of being a full-time eBay trader?/ Have you had
any bad experiences when buying or selling on eBay?
10.Is there anything that would make your life easier/ better as a fulltime eBay trader/ drop shop? E.g. different services from eBay, PayPal
or the Royal Mail?
11.What do you sell and why?/ What is the main category on the eBay
site in which your items are bought or sold? / Do you list your items in
only one category or in multiple categories?/ Why?/ Does what you sell
reveal anything about yourself?
12.Where (generally) to you source your stock? Do you ever resell from
eBay back to eBay?/ Do you sell your own surplus goods from the
home or surplus parts of your own collection(s)?/ Do you ever sell for
other people?/ Explain.
Knowledge
13.Does being an eBay trader in your particular area require much
specialist knowledge?/ If yes, where did you learn this knowledge?/
How do you keep you knowledge up to data?/ Have you acquired any
additional knowledge about the goods you sell, as a result of using
eBay?/ Do you feel you know everything you need to know to describe
your items accurately and get the best price?
14.How do you construct your item pages and take photos?/ Is there a
certain approach that you take?/ How much knowledge of the item do
you like to present?/ Have you have learnt anything about listing or
marketing your items, since using eBay? If so, what?
Identity
15.What is your selling user id (or IDs)? How did you choose it?/ Do you
have more than one user ID?/ Why?/ Did you set up a separate
identity for selling? Why?/ Would you like to have a few IDs?/ What
for?
16.Do your user IDs reflect what you sell (or buy) or anything about
yourself?/ Have you ever changed your user ID?/ Why?/ From what?/
Why haven't you changed your user name?/ Is it a recognisable user
name e.g. relates to you or your name?
17.If you have an eBay shop, what is it called?/ Why?/ Have you tried to
create your own 'brand'?/ How have you done this - shop name, user
name, graphics/ web page form/ content of your listing/ logos?
18.Do you have an ‘about me’ page?/ Why?/ Why not?/ Do you think
About Me pages are a good idea or not?/ If you have one, what is the
content of your page?
19.Do you recognise many of the other eBay users you see on the site?/
Are these other sellers or buyers?/ Are they competitors?/ Do you have
direct competitors?
20.How important is the feedback system to you?/ Explain./ Do you look
at buyers (and potential buyer’s) feedback profiles? Why/ why not?/
Do you have a policy regarding acceptable feedback levels? (e.g. no
bidders with less than 5 feedbacks or no more than 2 negatives, etc)/
When do you leave negative feedback?/ Have you ever felt like leaving
negative feedback but haven't?/ Why?/ Overall, how well do you think
the feedback system works?/ Is there anything you think would
improve the eBay feedback system?
Community
21.Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Explain?/ Do you feel more
or less part of an eBay community now you’re a full-time trader?/
22.Do you ever look at or post to the eBay community pages?/ Why or
why not?/ If you do, what kind of things do you post?/ Do you ever
offer knowledge? If yes, what about?/
23.Have you ever met buyers face-to-face? In what circumstances?/ Does
this make you feel more part of an eBay community?/ Do you
correspond much with other eBay buyers or sellers – for example with
repeat buyers? Is this social or for business reasons?
Services/ infrastructure
24.Do you have Broadband?/ If yes – when did you get Broadband and
was eBay listings your primary reason for adoption?
25.What experiences have you had with the Royal Mail?/ How could things
be improved for you?/ Do you use couriers?/ What has your experience
been of them?
26.How do you receive payment for your eBay items? Cheque, PayPal,
hidden cash?/ Which do you prefer and why?/ If you’ve used PayPal,
what are your experiences of it – good or bad?
Managing sales
27.Have you ever been to an eBay University course?/ Why?/ Why not?
28.Do you use any of the selling manager tools - such as Seling Manager,
Selling Manager Pro or Turbo Lister?/ Why?/ Why not?/ Do you find
these useful?/ Why? Why not?
Trading assistant questions
29.What kind of help do you offer people wanting to sell on eBay?
Advice?/ Selling on their behalf?
30.Why did you decide to be a trading assistant?/ Did you feel you could
offer any particular types of knowledge?/ What particularly did you feel
you could offer as a trading assistant?
‘Drop shop’ questions
31.Why did you decide to become an eBay drop shop?/ Does this
supplement an existing business or is it your core business?/ Do you
trade ‘dropped off’ items on other auction forums, or just eBay? Why/
why not?
32.Do people ever tell you why they are using the drop shop rather than
selling themselves e.g. using your expertise in selling/ not possessing
the knowledge to get started on eBay?/ Needed to sell a lot of things
quickly?/ What are their reasons for using you?
33.Do people ever tell you that they are supplying goods to you, to sell on
their behalf, rather than taking them to the charity shop/ car boot
sale?
Interview schedule
Experience:
Level & general search preferences?
1. How did you first hear about the eBay Site? (i.e., friend, family, search
engine, advertisement, etc.)
2. How long have you been using the eBay Site? As a buyer? As a browser?
3. Do you mostly go on eBay to buy specific things or just to browse? What
are you mainly doing when on the site - browsing, bidding, waiting for
auctions to end, checking progress of items, using community pages?
4. What kind of items do you buy and/or browse? Do you tend to search for
items through the eBay categories, or do you use the search box?/ Do you
ever watch the end of the auction countdown? If so, how does this feel?
5. Even though you’re not a registered user, do you regard yourself as a new
user ('newbie') or a more experienced user?
6. Whose user id do you use, when bidding?/ Did you browse eBay before
you had permission to use a registered id?/ What were you browsing?/
What made you initially ask to bid using your parent’s id?
7. Do you know the id? If so, do you need permission each time you use the
id to make a bid? Or does the registered person bid for you? Do you ever
want to buy things your parents don’t want you to buy? If so, what?
What, when & where?
8. Where do you look at the eBay site - at home, at friend’s houses, or
elsewhere?
9. How often do you visit the eBay site?/ For how long at a time?/ [For very
frequent users] Would you describe yourself as an 'addict' or becoming
addicted to eBay?/ Why do you use the site that frequently?/ What would
you be doing if you weren't on eBay?/ What has eBay replaced - TV
watching, school work, etc?
10. You said you buy and/or look for ‘X’ - why do you buy it there rather than
in a shop or elsewhere? Have you ever got any real 'bargains' on eBay?/
What were they? Have you ever bid on anything from abroad?/ Why/ why
not?
11. What is the most unique, weird or otherwise unusual item you’ve bought
on eBay? What is the most unusual item you’ve ever seen listed?
eBay process & (dis)attractors
12. Do you send emails to the people you’ve bought from or do your parents
send the emails? If you do send the emails, does the seller know you’re a
young person? Do you parents supervise your eBay emails (both sellers’
and yours)?
13. Has how you use eBay changed over time? E.g. do you bid differently?
Buying more or less?/ Do you 'snipe'? Either manually or using software?
If yes, why do you do this?
14. When bidding, does the feedback of sellers matter to you?/ Have you ever
looked at the feedback of the seller when buying?/ What feedback would
put you off buying?
15. Do you get the chance to post feedback after you’ve won items, or does
‘X’ (the registered user) do it for you?/ Have you or someone on your
behalf, ever left negative feedback?/ Why?/ Have you ever felt like leaving
negative feedback but haven't?/ Why?/
16. What matters most to you about eBay?/ What do you like best about the
site?/ Generally, what is the best thing about using eBay?
17. Why do you think so many people use eBay?
18. What do you least like about the site?/ Generally, what are the worst
things about using eBay?
19. Have you had any bad experiences when using eBay - what are they?
Peers & eBay:
1. Do your friends (at school and elsewhere) use and talk about eBay? If so,
what sort of things do they say? What sort of things do they buy? Do you
and your friends tend to buy similar things?
2. Do you tend to swap things with your friends? For example, if you’ve got
things you no longer want – eg more than one of the same thing – do you
tend to swap these with your friends? If not, why not and what do you do
with them?
3. Do you and your friends swap information about the sort of things you
collect/buy? Do you pick up much information about items from eBay – eg
what’s available, what’s rare, etc.? Or from elsewhere?
E-commerce generally:
1. How long have you been using the Internet? What did you first start using
the Internet for?
2. In addition to eBay, are there any other shopping sites you buy from? Do
you spend as much time on these as eBay?/ What are these and why do
you spend time there? What sites do your friends visit?
3. Do you like shopping on the Internet? Do you prefer shopping in real
shops or on the net?
4. What sort of websites did you look at before eBay? Has eBay replaced
any, in terms of sites you visit?
5. Do your parents leave you to look at the Internet on your own or do they
supervise you? Does your computer have any software that stops you
looking at certain things/sites?
Identity
1. If you could have a user id of your own, what would you choose? Would
you want to project an image with it?/ Why?/ Would it be related to what
your are buying, or not?/ Why?
2. Would you have more than one user ID?/ Why?
3. Have you seen any user IDs which you think are cool?/ What are they?
4. Do you ever look at people’s About Me pages? Do you think ABOUT ME
pages are a good idea? Why/why not?
Knowledge
1. Do you feel you've gained any knowledge about the things you collect
through looking at eBay?/ What sort of knowledge/information?
2. Has using eBay changed what you buy or want to buy?
3. Has using eBay changed what you buy when shopping in the real world?
4. Do you ever look at or buy things which are mislabelled or miss-spelt?
Community
1. Do you ever look at the community pages?/ Do you ever post to them?/
Why/ Why not?/ If you are not allowed to post replies, do you wish you
could?/ Why?
2. If you do post, how often and which ones do you visit?/ Why those ones?/
Do you talk to any eBay users regularly?/ What are their user names?/ Do
you know the real names of anyone you ‘talk’ to on the site?
3. What do you write on the community pages?/ Do you offer knowledge or
advice?/ About what?
4. Generally - not just thinking about the community pages - do you feel part
of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/ In what ways?
5. Do you feel less part of the community because you are younger? Do you
feel less part of the community because you are using somebody else’s
user id?
6. Do they either imagine or know that there are other young people of your
age, looking at and buying from eBay? Have you ever talked to any other
young people through using the eBay site?
Collecting/ consumption
1. Do you collect things? If so, what do you collect?/ Do you buy these things
on eBay?/ Do you buy them elsewhere too, eg car boot sales, high street,
charity shops, markets, etc.? Has eBay changed the way you shop for the
things you collect? For your collection, do you prefer shopping on eBay or
going to regular shops/ markets, etc.?
2. How much of your eBay buying is to build your collection?/ Did you start
off collecting on eBay, or were you collecting before?
3. What do you do with the things you don’t want anymore – eg you have
more than one or you no longer collect them? Do you ever swap things?
4. On eBay, although you can’t sell items yourself, have you ever given an
item to sell on eBay? Do you wish you could sell things yourself? What
sort of things would you sell?
Financial
1. How do you usually pay for the things you buy? Do you pay your parents
back? Is it pocket money or money you’ve earned?
2. Do either you or your parents think you are spending too much on eBay?
3. Are there more things you’d want to buy, if you had the money?/ Has
eBay made you want to earn more money/ have a pocket-money raise?
Questions for eBay stamp/ FDC collectors
1. How long have you been using eBay? / When did you register?/
How long have you been using the site?/ Did you browse the site
before you were a registered user?/ Why didn't you register straight
away?/ What were you browsing?/ What made you register?/ How
did you find out about it?/ Did you buy first or sell first?
2. How often do you visit or browse the eBay site?/ For how long at
a time?/ What are you browsing - your own items being sold, items
to buy?
3. Have you ever had any bad experiences of using eBay?/ Spoof
e-mails, identity theft, negative feedback etc.
Identity
1. What is your user name on eBay?/ How did you choose it?/ Do
people recognise who you are from the name?/ Did you want to be
recognised?/ Do you have an 'About Me' page or a link to a static
web site?/ Why?/ Why not?/
2. Do you 'recognise' any of the other eBay users you see on the
site?/ Do you recognise any user names?/ Are they people who
attend collectors' fairs/ exhibitions?/ How do you know them?/
Have you ended up buying or selling from people you know, on
eBay?
Buying and collecting practices
1. What kind of things have you been buying?/ What do you
collect and why?/ Is it stamps and FDCs?/ Particular post
marks?/ Themes of stamps?/ Signed FDCs?/ Has eBay
enabled you to collect these things quicker than before
eBay?/ Are you buying abroad?/ What and where from?/
Why these?/
2. Are you concerned about the investment value of the
stamps/ FDCs?/ What is your primary motivation for
collecting stamps/ FDCs - e.g. art work, signatures?/ Is
investment value still important?
3. Why did you start collecting stamps?
4. How has eBay changed the nature of your collection and
your collecting?/ How much of your eBay buying is
collecting?/ Do you feel the same way about things you've
bought from eBay vs. offline?/ Are you as 'attached' to them
or like them as much?/ Do you ask questions about the
provenance of the item when bought on eBay?/ Do you ask
about provenance when you buy 'offline'?
5. When you buy things on eBay, do you tend to put in a
higher proxy bid or pay more for them than you would from
mail order or other 'physical' arenas (e.g. collectors fairs)?/
Does the auction format encourage you to 'pay more' - if you
do?/ Why do you pay more?
6. Would you prefer to buy in an eBay auction or through a
fixed price 'buy it now'?/ Why?
7. Do you buy stamps anywhere else online e.g. other internet
auctions, other static websites?/ Has eBay replaced these?
8. Do you buy stamps using mail order channels?/ Why do
you still buy 'mail order'?/ What do you get out of buying
mail order - e.g. better value, certain stamps or FDCs?/ Do
you think you will continue buying mail order?/ Do you chat
more generally when you ring up to order stamps/ FDCs?/
Does this make you feel part of a community?/ Would you
prefer these mail order firms to be on the Internet too?/
Their own web pages?/ Selling via eBay?/ Fixed price?/
Auction?
9. Do you perceive stamps differently when you see them
advertised through mail order catalogues vs. online on
eBay?/ Do you feel stamps advertised in a printed catalogue
at a fixed price are more 'trustworthy'?
10. Do you prefer to buy ‘face-to-face’ rather than online?/ Why?
11. Have you ever got an eBay ‘bargain’?/ How did you get it –
incorrectly spelt, wrong category etc?/ Do you think you can get a
bargain on eBay?
Selling
1. Why did you start selling on eBay?/ What kind of things are you
selling?/ Surplus parts of your collection?/ Reselling?/ Are you a
dealer?/ Are you a dealer to make money, or to get the best
stamps/ FDCs?/ Are you selling stamp and non-stamp related items
on eBay?/ If eBay didn’t exist, where would you be selling these
items?/ Do you sell many stamps abroad?/
2. What is your approach to describing your item listings?/ Do you
like to write a lot about the history/ provenance of the item?/ How
much knowledge of the item do you like to present?/ How do you
take the photos - look, background, detail?/ What is your approach
to listing in terms of categories?/ Do you offer opinions about
condition and quality?
Physical meetings
1. Do you attend collectors' fairs/ exhibitions?/ Which ones?/ Has
eBay reduced the number you go to?/ Did you used to sell at
these?/ Why?/ Why not?/ What things do you sell now at fairs? /
What do you sell on eBay vs. at fairs?/ Why?
2. Do you think it's changing the nature of the collectors' fairs/
exhibitions?/ How?/ Do you think it’s changing the quality of the
items?/ How is it changing the nature of collectors' fairs/
exhibitions?/ Do you think it's changing the type or number of
participants?/ Do you think that it is encouraging more people to
join the stamp/ first day cover societies/ clubs?/ Do you think it's
changing the stamp collecting community in general – the
composition?
3. Do you attend any physical stamp auctions?/ Which ones?/ Has
eBay reduced the number of these you go to?
4. Do you think eBay is a good or bad thing for stamp/ FDC
collecting?/ Why?/ Do you think there should be another online
forum for buying and selling stamps/ FDCs instead of eBay?
Non-participation
1. Why do you think some stamp/ FDC collectors don't use eBay?/
Do you know any collecting friends who don’t use it, and what are
their reasons? – Not using the Internet, don’t agree with it, too
easy?
Knowledge
1. Do you ever offer knowledge to other eBay sellers e.g. to point
out mistakes?/ Do you see descriptions that are wrong?/ If you
don’t point them out to the sellers, why not?
2. Do you buy items where you know what they are and the seller
doesn’t?
3. Do you feel you've gained any knowledge about stamps/ FDCs
through browsing the eBay site?/ What sort of knowledge?
4. Has being an eBay user changed what you buy or would like to
buy in any way?
Community
1. Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do you ever
post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/ Do you feel part of an eBay
community?/ Why?/ Why not?/ Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/
Why not?
2. Do you use any other stamp related online forums?/ Do you feel
part of these communities?/ Why?
3. Do you feel part of a stamp/ FDC collecting community?/ Why?/
Why not?/ What makes you feel part of one – shared friends,
attending events/ exhibitions, the practice of collecting, receiving
publications etc?/ Are you part of certain collectors' clubs/
societies and subscribe to them?/ Why are you part of
these?/ What do you value from them?
4. When buying or selling on eBay, is there any social chat
between you and the buyer/ seller?/ What sorts of things do you
talk about?
5. Have you ever had face-to-face contact with anyone you've met
through eBay? Under what circumstances (e.g. personal collection
or delivery, or at an organised social event (an eyeball)?/ Does this
make you feel more part of an eBay community or an 'eBayer'?
Postal mail
1. What are your experiences of the post?/ What are the good
experiences?/ What are the bad experiences?/ Buyer experiences or
seller experiences?/ What are your perceptions of the Post Office?
2. How do you think the postal service could be improved?/ What
services would you like to see?
3. Have you ever had anything damaged or lost in the post?/ How
was this resolved with the Post Office and seller?/
4. What are your experiences with courier firms?
5. Do you import items from outside the UK?/ Where from?/ What
are your postal/ courier experiences for these?/ How about
customs and excise fees/ duty?/ Are you put off from buying outside
the UK?/ Why?
Financial
1. How do you usually pay/ receive payment for your eBay items?/
Why do you choose this method or methods?
2. Have you had any bad experiences with payment methods?/
What are these?
3. How do you think payment services could be improved?
4. How do you pay for items bought from abroad?/ Why do you use
this method?/
Internet
1. Where do you look at the eBay site - at home, at work, both?/
Do your employers mind you looking at the site at work? (if you are
employed not self-employed)/ If you look at eBay when at work,
why is this? (e.g. non-work at work, faster connection etc).
2. What type of connection do you have - dial-up, Broadband? Pay
as you go, anytime? Would using eBay encourage you to have
Broadband or an anytime service?/ Has having Broadband increased
your eBay usage?/ Why?/ Why not?
Income/ self-employment
1. Could you imagine becoming a full-time eBay seller?/ Why?/
Why not?/ How would you categorise your selling - occasional,
hobbyist, part-time business, full-time business?
2. If you are a seller, do you work full-time?/ How do you fit eBay
selling around your full-time job?
Questions for eBay radio collectors
1. How long have you been using eBay? / When did you register?/
How long have you been using the site?/ Did you browse the site
before you were a registered user?/ Why didn't you register straight
away?/ What were you browsing?/ What made you register?/ How
did you find out about it?/ Did you buy first or sell first?
2. How often do you visit or browse the eBay site?/ For how long at
a time?/ What are you browsing - your own items being sold, items
to buy?
3. Have you ever had any bad experiences of using eBay?/ Spoof
e-mails, identity theft, negative feedback etc.
Identity
3. What is your user name on eBay?/ How did you choose it?/ Do
people recognise who you are from the name?/ Did you want to be
recognised?/ Do you have an 'About Me' page or a link to a static
web site?/ Why?/ Why not?/
4. Do you 'recognise' any of the other eBay users you see on the
site?/ Do you recognise any user names?/ Are they people who
attend swap meets/ physical meetings?/ Have you ended up buying
or selling from people you know, on eBay?
Buying and collecting practices
1. What kind of things have you been buying?/ What do you
collect and why?/ Has eBay enabled you to collect these things
quicker than before eBay?/ Are you buying abroad?/ What and
where from?/ Why these?/ What do you like about sets from these
countries?
2. How has eBay changed the nature of your collection and your
collecting?/ How much of your eBay buying is collecting?/ Do you
feel the same way about things you've bought from eBay vs.
offline?/ Are you as 'attached' to them?/ Do you ask questions
about the provenance of the item when bought on eBay?/ Do you
ask about provenance when you buy 'offline'?
3. Do you still look out for radios in physical forums – junk shops,
antiques fairs?/ Has eBay reduced the number of these you go to?/
Do you buy radios anywhere else online e.g. other auctions, other
static websites?/ Has eBay changed what you buy in ‘offline’
forums?
4. Do you prefer to buy ‘face-to-face’ rather than online?/ Why?
5. Have you ever got an eBay ‘bargain’?/ How did you get it –
incorrectly spelt, wrong category etc?/ Do you think you can get a
bargain on eBay?
Selling
1. Why did you start selling on eBay?/ What kind of things are you
selling?/ Surplus parts of your collection?/ Reselling?/ Radio-related
and non radio-related?/ If eBay didn’t exist, where would you be
selling these items?/ Do you sell many radios abroad?/
2. What is your approach to describing your item listings?/ Do you
like to write a lot about the history/ provenance of the item?/ How
much knowledge of the item do you like to present?/ How do you
take the photos - look, background, detail?/ What is your approach
to listing in terms of categories – radio, or consumer electronics
vintage?/ Do you offer opinions about how good/ bad they are?
Physical meetings
1. Do you attend swap meets/ physical meetings?/ Has eBay
reduced the number you go to?/ Do you still sell at these?/ Did you
used to sell at these?/ What things do you sell now at swap meets?
/ What do you sell on eBay vs. at swap meets?/ Why?
2. Do you think it's changing the nature of the swap meets?/ How?/
Do you think it’s changing the quality of the items?/ How is it
changing the nature of the swapmeet auctions and their content?/
Do you think it's changing the type or number of participants?/ Do
you think that it is encouraging more people to join the BVWS or be
radio collectors?/ Do you think it's changing the radio collecting
community in general – the composition?
3. Do you think eBay is a good or bad thing for the vintage radio
community?/ Why?/ Do you think there should be another online
forum for buying and selling radios?
Non-participation
1. Why do you think some members don't use eBay?/ Do you
know any radio collecting friends who don’t use it, and what are
their reasons? – Not using the Internet, don’t agree with it?
Knowledge
1. Do you ever offer knowledge to other eBay sellers e.g. to point
out mistakes or identify unknown sets?/ Do you see descriptions
that are wrong?/ If you don’t point them out to the sellers, why not?
2. Do you buy items where you know what they are and the seller
doesn’t?
3. Do you feel you've gained any knowledge about radios/
collectables through browsing the eBay site?/ What sort of
knowledge?
4. Has being an eBay user changed what you buy or altered your
tastes in any way?
Community
1. Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do you ever
post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/ Do you feel part of an eBay
community?/ Why?/ Why not?/ Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/
Why not?
2. Do you use any other radio-related online forums e.g. Paul
Stenning’s, US antique radio forum?/ Do you feel part of these
communities?/ Why?
3. Do you feel part of a radio collecting community?/ Why?/ Why
not?/ What makes you feel part of one – shared friends, attending
events, the practice of collecting, receiving publications etc?
4. When buying or selling, is there any social chat between you
and the buyer/ seller?/ What sorts of things do you talk about?
5. Have you ever had face-to-face contact with anyone you've met
through eBay? Under what circumstances (e.g. personal collection
or delivery, or at an organised social event (an eyeball)?/ Does this
make you feel more part of an eBay community or an 'eBayer'?
Postal mail
1. What are your experiences of the post?/ What are the good
experiences?/ What are the bad experiences?/ Buyer experiences or
seller experiences?/ What are your perceptions of the Post Office?
2. How do you think the postal service could be improved?/ What
services would you like to see?
3. Have you ever had anything broken or lost in the post?/ How
was this resolved with the Post Office and seller?/ Did this make you
reluctant to buy things which had to be posted and/ or are bulky or
fragile?
4. Would you like a service particularly for fragile items?/ Would
you like more or better item tracking?
5. Sellers - would you like better access to packaging materials?/
What sort?/ Do you use any of the Post Office's packing materials?/
Why?/ Why not?
6. What are your experiences with courier firms?
7. Do you import items from outside the UK?/ Where from?/ What
are your postal/ courier experiences for these?/ How about
customs and excise fees/ duty?/ Are you put off from buying outside
the UK?/ Why?
8. How would you feel about pricing which is done by volume and
not weight?
Financial
1. How do you usually pay/ receive payment for your eBay items?/
Why do you choose this method or methods?
2. Have you had any bad experiences with payment methods?/
What are these?
3. How do you think payment services could be improved?
4. How do you pay for items bought from abroad?/ Why do you use
this method?/
Internet
1. Where do you look at the eBay site - at home, at work, both?/
Do your employers mind you looking at the site at work? (if you are
employed not self-employed)/ If you look at eBay when at work,
why is this? (e.g. non-work at work, faster connection etc).
2. What type of connection do you have - dial-up, Broadband? Pay
as you go, anytime? Would using eBay encourage you to have
Broadband or an anytime service?/ Has having Broadband increased
your eBay usage?/ Why?/ Why not?
Income/ self-employment
1. Could you imagine becoming a full-time eBay seller?/ Why?/
Why not?/ How would you categorise your selling - occasional,
hobbyist, part-time business, full-time business?
2. If you are a seller, do you work full-time?/ How do you fit eBay
selling around your full-time job?
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for sellers of the items we buy
eBay item title and/ or number:
The item & you
1. Do you specialise in selling particular items?/ Which ones?
2. Is this an item that you've had a long time?
a. How long?
b. Why did you want to get rid of it?
c. Why did you wait until now?
3. How did the item come into your possession?
a. Bought by yourself for your own use?
b. Where did you buy it from?
c. Is it an item that you bought to resell?
d. Was it a gift or inherited?
e. Other? (please specify)
4. If you bought the item to resell, where did you buy it from (if you
don’t want to state a specific place, please generalise – e.g. an
offline auction)?
a. Did it fetch more money than you paid for it?
b. How did you know it was worth more than you paid, or
that it might do well on eBay?
5. Why did you decide to sell the item on eBay?
a. Had you tried to sell or otherwise dispose of this item by any
other means?
If yes, where/ how?
If not, why not?
b. Was this your first attempt to sell it on eBay?
If no:
• Why do you think it didn’t sell the first time?
• Did you try any different strategies when selling the item
this time, or was the listing a direct duplicate of
previously?
6. If eBay didn't exist, what would you have done with the item?
Would you have considered any of the below and why?
a. Kept it?
b. Donated it to a charity shop?
c. Another online auction?
d. Traditional auction house?
e. Thrown it away?
f. Sold to an antiques dealer?
g. Given it away to friends/ relatives?
e. Advertised for a private sale via a local/ or specialist paper?
f. Other (please specify)
7. Do you sell many items abroad?
a. Approximately what proportion?
b. To what countries?
c. Has this changed over time? If yes, why do you think this is?
Listing your item
8. How did you decide to categorise your item?
a. Was there a choice of categories?
b. Did you place your item in more than one category? If yes,
why?
c. How did you decide which one(s) to choose?
9. How did you decide words/ terms to put in the ‘item heading’?
10.
What approach did you take to describing this item?
For example:
a. Did you place any 'spin' on how you portrayed the item?
(e.g. vintage, retro, from a particular designer)
If yes,
• Why did you do this?
• Was this ‘spin’ used in the item title, the description or
both?
b. How did you decide, for example:
• The depth of description to use?
• What level of knowledge to offer about the item?
• Whether or not to outline its ‘history’ – for example - why
it’s being sold?
11. In general, not just in terms of this item, do you have a particular
approach when you describe the items you’re selling? How do you
decide:
• The depth of description appropriate?
• The words to use?
• Do you tend to offer opinions about your items?
(e.g. rare, technically good)?
• Do you tend to offer any information about biography/
history/ provenance of the item - e.g. previous owners, why
you are getting rid of it?
• How much 'knowledge' do you offer about the item?
• Where did you get this information from?
(e.g. Already knew, info sought from elsewhere e.g. books,
Internet)
12. What approach do you generally take regarding photographing
your items?
• Same approach regardless of the item-type? Why/ why not?
• Do you always use a photo? Why/ why not?
• Do you always/ ever use gallery shots? Why/ why not?
Money matters
13. How did you decide on the start price/ reserve?
a. Were any of these influential?:
• Did this amount correspond in any way, to how much you
‘valued’ the item?
• Based on a desire for cheaper eBay fees?
• Restrictions posed by an eBay free (or cheaper) listing
day?
• Typical starting prices for similar items on eBay?
• Prices on other auction sites?
• Based on completed or current eBay items which are the
same/ similar?
• Based on value guides (e.g. Miller's guides)?
b. Did you or were you tempted to use a buy-it-now price in
addition to/ instead of an auction format? Why/ why not?
14. If you specified a reserve price, why did you do this?
a. Is this a strategy you would typically use or do you consider a
reserve only appropriate for certain items? Why?
b. If you use a reserve, is this applied any special way? For
example, do you do any of the following and why?
• Do you hint at the reserve in your description?
• Do you tend to set the reserve very close or a lot higher
than your start price?
15.
Regarding the final price of the current item, did you expect (or
hope) to get more for the item?
a. What price were you expecting and why/ what was this
expectation based on?
b. Given that your expectation was higher than the price actually
attained, would you do anything differently, in terms of where to
sell, when to sell, and how to sell the item?
16. Did you get more than you expected for the item?/ Why do you
think this was?
Your eBay identity
17. Does your username relate to what you sell?
• If yes, why?
• If not, does it have any other significant meaning to you?
18. Do you have an ‘about me’ page (biographical page hosted by
eBay)?/ Why? Why not?
Community
19. Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/
• Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/ Why not?
• Do you feel part of an eBay community of collectors (e.g. for
whatever you collect)?
• Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do you ever
post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Becky
____________________________________________
Dr Rebecca Ellis
Chimera
Institute for Socio-Technical Research & Innovation
University of Essex
________________________________________
E: [email protected]
T: +44(0) 1473 632240
M: 07909 895905
F: 01473 614936
Adastral Park, PP1 Ross Building,
Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE
_________________________________________
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for buyers of our items
eBay item title and/ or number:
Why did you bid on this item?
1. Why did you buy this eBay item?/ What were your motivations?
a. Why did you buy this item on eBay, rather than from
'offline' shopping forums (e.g. high street, market, charity
shops)?
b. Why did you buy it on eBay as opposed to purchasing
from another Internet site?
c. Were you searching for this particular item or just
browsing on the site?
d. If searching, specifically:
ƒ Had you been searching for a long time?
ƒ Did you ‘miss out’ on this item when it was available
in the shops (eg sold-out or couldn’t get your size)?
e. Are you buying it to wear for a special occasion?
f. Are you buying it to specifically match something else?
g. Or was it an impulse purchase?
If yes:
• Would you say you are more, less, or just as
impulsive buying from eBay as you are offline or
elsewhere on the Internet? Why?
f. Did you see anything similar or the same on eBay that
you were tempted to bid on?
• Did you bid on it?
• If not, why not? Why did you bid on this item
instead?
Why did you bid on my item?
2. Before submitting your bid, did you look at my feedback?
a. Was this an important factor in you bidding for my item?
If yes:
• Is positive feedback important always or only for
certain types/ categories of item?
• With regards negative feedback, do you have a
cut-off point, whereby if sellers have more than
this you, won’t deal with them? Why/ why not?
3. Was there anything in the description that particularly attracted
you to the item?
a. The description?
• Was it ‘important’ or otherwise helpful to know
why the item was being sold? Why/ why not?
• Is knowing the condition of the item important
when deciding to bid? Why/ why not?
b. The photograph?
• Do you only ever bid when a photograph is
supplied? Why/ why not?
• How essential is a having a photograph (and the
quality of the photograph), on your decision to
bid? Why/ why not?
• What about gauging the colour/ pattern of the
actual items, based on the photograph supplied?
c. Having a ‘gallery picture’ (on the search page)?
• Do you look at all the items found or do you tend to
view items with gallery pictures more?
4. Overall, was there anything about the biography/ history/
provenance of the item that interested you and helped your
decision to bid? Please specify.
How did you bid?
6. How did you bid?
a. Did you 'snipe' at the last minute or second (i.e. wait to
place your bid at the last possible moment)? If yes:
• Why did you do this?
• Was this done manually or using sniping software?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’, prior
to bidding?
• Do you tend to snipe all the time or only for certain
items? Why?
• If you regularly snipe, do you always snipe in the same
way - always manually snipe, or use software, or a
combination of both techniques? Why/ why not?
b. Or did you submit your highest bid during the auction
rather than at the last moment? Why?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’,
prior to bidding?
How did you decide on a price to bid?
7. How did you decide what amount to bid?
a. Did the amount of your maximum bid correspond, in any
way, to how much you wanted the item?
b. Was your bid informed by any of the following?
• Offline prices?
• Prices on other online sites (incl. auction sites)?
• Final prices, previously on eBay?
• Prices of similar items currently on eBay?
• Market price? (i.e. did you keep up-ing your bid based
on the bids from other eBayers?)
c. For this type of item would you have preferred a Buy-itnow’ price rather than an auction format? Why/ why not?
Post-purchase
8. When you received the item, what did you do with it? Why?
a. Wash it?
b. Customise or otherwise modify it?
b. Repair or restore it?
9. Do you think you'll get rid of the item? If yes:
a. Why?
b. How do you plan to do this?
• Re-sell on eBay?
• Re-sell elsewhere?
• Give to someone you know?
• Donate to charity shop?
c. How quickly?
eBay & second-hand items
10. Before you started buying on eBay, did you buy second-hand
items through any other forums (e.g. car-boot sales, charity
shops, flee markets)?
a. If not, why not?
b. If yes:
• Where did you buy from (e.g. flea market, charity
shops, or car-boot sales, another online auction site)
and why?
• Do you use other internet auction sites? Why/ why
not? If yes, which ones?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from 'offline' secondhand forums (e.g. antique shops, car boot sales)?/
Why?/ Why not?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from other 'online'
second-hand forums (e.g. antiques web sites, other
auction sites)?
• Have you ever purchased from traditional (nonInternet) auctions? Why/ why not?
11. Generally, in terms of eBay purchases, how do you feel about
items you buy on the site?
a. Do you feel as 'attached' to (or otherwise value) eBay
items compared to items you buy elsewhere?
• Offline (e.g. shops, markets, charity shops)? Why/
Why not?
• Other online sites? Why/ Why not?
• New items? Why/ Why not?
Community
12. Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/
• Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/ Why not?
• Do you feel part of an eBay community of collectors
(e.g. for whatever you collect)?
• Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do
you ever post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Anna
___________________________________________
Anna Haywood
Chimera
University of Essex
M: +44(0) 7764 976938
F: +44(0) 1473 614936
Ross Building pp1, Adastral Park, Ipswich,
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk IP5 3RE
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for buyers of our items
eBay item title and/ or number:
Why did you bid on this item?
1. Why did you buy this eBay item?/ What were your motivations?
a. Why did you buy this item on eBay, rather than from
'offline' shopping forums (e.g. high street, market, charity
shops)?
b. Why did you buy it on eBay as opposed to purchasing
from another Internet site?
c. Were you searching for this particular item or just
browsing on the site?
d. If searching, specifically:
ƒ Had you been searching for a long time?
ƒ Did you ‘miss out’ on this item when it was available
in the shops (eg sold-out or couldn’t get your size)?
e. Are you buying it to wear for a special occasion?
f. Are you buying it to specifically match something else?
g. Or was it an impulse purchase?
If yes:
• Would you say you are more, less, or just as
impulsive buying from eBay as you are offline or
elsewhere on the Internet? Why?
f. Did you see anything similar or the same on eBay that
you were tempted to bid on?
• Did you bid on it?
• If not, why not? Why did you bid on this item
instead?
Why did you bid on my item?
2. Before submitting your bid, did you look at my feedback?
a. Was this an important factor in you bidding for my item?
If yes:
• Is positive feedback important always or only for
certain types/ categories of item?
• With regards negative feedback, do you have a
cut-off point, whereby if sellers have more than
this you, won’t deal with them? Why/ why not?
3. Was there anything in the description that particularly attracted
you to the item?
a. The description?
• Was it ‘important’ or otherwise helpful to know
why the item was being sold? Why/ why not?
• Is knowing the condition of the item important
when deciding to bid? Why/ why not?
b. The photograph?
• Do you only ever bid when a photograph is
supplied? Why/ why not?
• How essential is a having a photograph (and the
quality of the photograph), on your decision to
bid? Why/ why not?
• What about gauging the colour/ pattern of the
actual items, based on the photograph supplied?
c. Having a ‘gallery picture’ (on the search page)?
• Do you look at all the items found or do you tend to
view items with gallery pictures more?
4. Overall, was there anything about the biography/ history/
provenance of the item that interested you and helped your
decision to bid? Please specify.
How did you bid?
6. How did you bid?
a. Did you 'snipe' at the last minute or second (i.e. wait to
place your bid at the last possible moment)? If yes:
• Why did you do this?
• Was this done manually or using sniping software?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’, prior
to bidding?
• Do you tend to snipe all the time or only for certain
items? Why?
• If you regularly snipe, do you always snipe in the same
way - always manually snipe, or use software, or a
combination of both techniques? Why/ why not?
b. Or did you submit your highest bid during the auction
rather than at the last moment? Why?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’,
prior to bidding?
How did you decide on a price to bid?
7. How did you decide what amount to bid?
a. Did the amount of your maximum bid correspond, in any
way, to how much you wanted the item?
b. Was your bid informed by any of the following?
• Offline prices?
• Prices on other online sites (incl. auction sites)?
• Final prices, previously on eBay?
• Prices of similar items currently on eBay?
• Market price? (i.e. did you keep up-ing your bid based
on the bids from other eBayers?)
c. For this type of item would you have preferred a Buy-itnow’ price rather than an auction format? Why/ why not?
Post-purchase
8. When you received the item, what did you do with it? Why?
a. Wash it?
b. Customise or otherwise modify it?
c. Repair or restore it?
9. Do you think you'll get rid of the item? If yes:
a. Why?
b. How do you plan to do this?
• Re-sell on eBay?
• Re-sell elsewhere?
• Give to someone you know?
• Donate to charity shop?
c. How quickly?
eBay & second-hand items
10. Before you started buying on eBay, did you buy second-hand
items through any other forums (e.g. car-boot sales, charity
shops, flee markets)?
a. If not, why not?
b. If yes:
• Where did you buy from (e.g. flea market, charity
shops, or car-boot sales, another online auction site)
and why?
• Do you use other internet auction sites? Why/ why
not? If yes, which ones?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from 'offline' secondhand forums (e.g. antique shops, car boot sales)?/
Why?/ Why not?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from other 'online'
second-hand forums (e.g. antiques web sites, other
auction sites)?
• Have you ever purchased from traditional (nonInternet) auctions? Why/ why not?
11. Generally, in terms of eBay purchases, how do you feel about
items you buy on the site?
a. Do you feel as 'attached' to (or otherwise value) eBay
items compared to items you buy elsewhere?
• Offline (e.g. shops, markets, charity shops)? Why/
Why not?
• Other online sites? Why/ Why not?
• New items? Why/ Why not?
Community
12. Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/
• Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/ Why not?
• Do you feel part of an eBay community of collectors
(e.g. for whatever you collect)?
• Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do
you ever post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Anna
___________________________________________
Anna Haywood
Chimera
University of Essex
M: +44(0) 7764 976938
F: +44(0) 1473 614936
Ross Building pp1, Adastral Park, Ipswich,
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk IP5 3RE
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for buyers of our items
eBay item title and/ or number:
Why did you bid on this item?
1. Why did you buy this eBay item?/ What were your motivations?
a. Why did you buy this item on eBay, rather than from
'offline' shopping forums (e.g. high street, market, charity
shops)?
b. Why did you buy it on eBay as opposed to purchasing
from another Internet site?
c. Were you searching for this particular item or just
browsing on the site?
d. If searching, specifically:
• Had you been searching for a long time?
• Did you ‘miss out’ on this item when it was available
in the shops (eg sold-out or couldn’t get your
size)?
e. Or was it an impulse purchase?
If yes:
• Would you say you are more, less, or just as
impulsive buying from eBay as you are offline or
elsewhere on the Internet? Why?
f. Did you see anything similar or the same on eBay that
you were tempted to bid on?
• Did you bid on it?
• If not, why not? Why did you bid on this item
instead?
Why did you bid on my item?
2. Before submitting your bid, did you look at my feedback?
a. Was this an important factor in you bidding for my item?
If yes:
• Is positive feedback important always or only for
certain types/ categories of item?
• With regards negative feedback, do you have a cutoff point, whereby if sellers have more than this
you, won’t deal with them?
3. Was there anything in the description that particularly attracted
you to the item?
a. The description?
• Was it ‘important’ or otherwise helpful to know why
the item was being sold?
• Is knowing the condition of the item important
when deciding to bid?
b. The photograph?
• Do you only ever bid when a photograph is
supplied? Why/ why not?
• How essential is a having a photograph (and the
quality of the photograph), on your decision to
bid?
c. Having a ‘gallery picture’ (on the search page)?
• Do you look at all the items found or do you tend to
view items with gallery pictures more?
4. Overall, was there anything about the biography/ history/
provenance of the item that interested you and helped your
decision to bid? Please specify.
Collecting practices and your item
5. Does your item form part of a 'collection'?
a. Why did you want it for the collection?
• How does it fit in with the rest of the collection?
• What 'role' does it play in the collection?
How did you bid?
6. How did you bid?
a. Did you 'snipe' at the last minute or second (i.e. wait to
place your bid at the last possible moment)? If yes:
• Why did you do this?
• Was this done manually or using sniping software?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’,
prior to bidding?
• Do you tend to snipe all the time or only for certain
items? Why?
• If you regularly snipe, do you always snipe in the
same way - always manually snipe or use software
or a combination? Why/ why not?
b. Or did you submit your highest bid during the auction
rather than at the last moment? Why?
• Did you keep an eye on this item using ‘My eBay’,
prior to bidding?
How did you decide on a price to bid?
7. How did you decide what amount to bid?
a. Did the amount of your maximum bid correspond, in any
way, to how much you wanted the item?
b. Was your bid informed by any of the following?
• Offline prices?
• Prices on other online sites (incl. auction sites)?
• Final prices, previously on eBay?
• Prices of similar items currently on eBay?
• Market price? (i.e. did you keep up-ing your bid
based on bids from other eBayers?)
c. For this type of item, would you have preferred a Buy-itnow’ price rather than an auction format? Why/ why not?
Post-purchase
8. When you received the item, what did you do with it? Why?
a. Clean it?
b. Customise or otherwise modify it?
c. Repair or restore it?
9. Do you think you'll get rid of the item?
If yes:
a. Why?
b. How do you plan to do this?
• Re-sell on eBay?
• Re-sell elsewhere?
• Give to someone you know?
• Donate to charity shop?
c. How quickly?
eBay & second-hand items
10. Before you started buying on eBay, did you buy second-hand
items through any other forums (e.g. car-boot sales, charity
shops, flee markets)?
a. If not, why not?
b. If yes:
• Where did you buy from (e.g. flea market, charity
shops, or car-boot sales, another online auction
site) and why?
• Do you use other internet auction sites? Why/ why
not? If yes, which ones?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from 'offline' secondhand forums (e.g. antique shops, car boot sales)?/
Why?/ Why not?
• Has eBay reduced your buying from other 'online'
second-hand forums (e.g. antiques web sites,
other auction sites)?
• Have you ever purchased from traditional (nonInternet) auctions? Why/ why not?
11. Generally, in terms of eBay purchases, how do you feel about
items you buy on the site?
a. Do you feel as 'attached' to (or otherwise value) eBay
items compared to items you buy elsewhere?
• Offline (e.g. shops, markets, charity shops)? Why/
Why not?
• Other online sites? Why/ Why not?
• New items? Why/ Why not?
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Becky
____________________________________________
Dr Rebecca Ellis
Chimera
Institute for Socio-Technical Research & Innovation
University of Essex
________________________________________
E: [email protected]
T: +44(0) 1473 632240
M: 07909 895905
F: 01473 614936
Adastral Park, PP1 Ross Building,
Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE
_________________________________________
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for sellers of the items we buy
eBay item title and/ or number:
The item & you
1. Do you specialise in selling particular items?/ If so, which ones?
2. The item that I bought from you, is it an item that you've had a
long time?
a. How long?
b. Why did you want to get rid of it?
c. Why did you wait until now?
3. How did the item come into your possession?
a. Bought by yourself for your own use?
b. Is it an item that you bought to resell?
c. Was it a gift or inherited?
d. Other? (please specify)
4. If you bought the item to resell, where did you buy it from (if you
don’t want to state a specific place, please generalise – e.g. an
offline auction)?
a. Did it fetch more money than you paid for it?
b. How did you know it was worth more than you paid, or
that it might do well on eBay?
5. Why did you decide to sell the item on eBay?
a. Had you tried to sell or otherwise dispose of this item by any
other means?
If yes, where/ how?
If not, why not?
b. Was this your first attempt to sell it on eBay?
If no:
• Why do you think it didn’t sell the first time?
• Did you try any different strategies when selling the item
this time, or was the listing a direct duplicate of
previously?
6. If eBay didn't exist, what would you have done with the item?
Would you have considered any of the below and why?
a. Kept it?
b. Donated it to a charity shop?
c. Another online auction?
d. Traditional auction house?
e. Thrown it away?
f. Given it away to friends/ relatives?
g. Advertised for a private sale via a local/ or specialist paper?
h. Other (please specify)
Listing your item
7. How did you decide to categorise your item?
a. Was there a choice of categories?
b. Did you place your item in more than one category? If yes,
why?
c. How did you decide which one(s) to choose?
8. How did you decide words/ terms to put in the ‘item heading’?
9. What approach did you take to describing this item?
For example:
a. Did you place any 'spin' on how you portrayed the item?
(e.g. vintage, retro, from a particular designer)
If yes,
• Why did you do this?
• Was this ‘spin’ used in the item title, the description or
both?
b. How did you decide, for example:
• The depth of description to use?
• What level of knowledge to offer about the item?
• Whether or not to outline its ‘history’ – for example - why
it’s being sold?
10.
In general, not just in terms of this item, do you have a
particular approach when you describe the items you’re selling?
How do you decide:
• The depth of description appropriate?
• The words to use?
• Do you tend to offer opinions about your items?
(e.g. rare, technically good)?
• Do you tend to offer any information about biography/
history/ provenance of the item - e.g. previous owners, why
you are getting rid of it?
• How much 'knowledge' do you offer about the item?
• Where did you get this information from?
(e.g. Already knew, info sought from elsewhere e.g. books,
Internet)
11.
What approach do you generally take regarding photographing
your items?
• Same approach regardless of the item-type? Why/ why not?
• Do you always use a photo? Why/ why not?
• Do you always/ ever use gallery shots? Why/ why not?
Money matters
12.
How did you decide on the start price/ reserve?
a. Were any of these influential and why?:
• Did this amount correspond in any way, to how much you
‘valued’ the item?
• Based on a desire for cheaper eBay fees?
• Restrictions posed by an eBay free (or cheaper) listing
day?
• Typical starting prices for similar items on eBay?
• Prices on other auction sites?
• Based on completed or current eBay items which are the
same/ similar?
• Based on value guides (e.g. Miller's guides)?
b. Did you or were you tempted to use a buy-it-now price in
addition to/ instead of an auction format? Why/ why not?
13.
If you specified a reserve price, why did you do this?
a. Is this a strategy you would typically use or do you consider a
reserve price only appropriate for certain items? Why?
b. If you use a reserve, is this applied in any special way? For
example, do you do any of the following and why?
• Do you hint at the reserve in your description?
• Do you tend to set the reserve very close or a lot higher
than your start price?
14.
Regarding the final price of the current item, did you expect (or
hope) to get more for the item?
a. What price were you expecting and why/ what was this
expectation based on?
b. Given that your expectation was higher than the price actually
attained, would you do anything differently, in terms of where to
sell, when to sell, and how to sell the item?
15.
Did you get more than you expected for the item?/ Why do you
think this was?
Your eBay identity
16.
Does your username relate to what you sell?
• If yes, why?
• If not, does it have any other significant meaning to you?
17.
Do you have an ‘about me’ page (biographical page hosted by
eBay)?/ Why? Why not?
Community
18.
Do you feel part of an eBay community?/ Why?/ Why not?/
• Do you feel like an 'eBayer'?/ Why?/ Why not?
• Do you feel part of an eBay community of collectors (e.g. for
whatever you collect)?
• Do you ever look at the eBay community pages?/ Do you ever
post to them?/ Why/ Why not?/
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Anna
___________________________________________
Anna Haywood
Chimera
University of Essex
M: +44(0) 7764 976938
F: +44(0) 1473 614936
Ross Building pp1, Adastral Park, Ipswich,
Martlesham Heath, Suffolk IP5 3RE
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera
All your responses to questions will be strictly anonymised in accordance with
best qualitative research practice.
The questions are grouped under headings in bold. Some questions are
numbered and some have letters and bullet points. Letters and bullet pointed
questions are an unpacking of the numbered questions.
Please type as much as you want underneath each question - the amount of
space left is no indication of the amount of text required.
Questions for sellers of the items we buy
eBay item title and/ or number:
The item & you
1. Do you specialise in selling particular items?/ Which ones?
2. Is this an item that you've had a long time?
a. How long?
b. Why did you want to get rid of it?
c. Why did you wait until now?
3. How did the item come into your possession?
a. Bought by yourself for your own use?
b. Where did you buy it from?
c. Is it an item that you bought to resell?
d. Was it a gift or inherited?
e. Other? (please specify)
4. If you bought the item to resell, where did you buy it from (if you
don’t want to state a specific place, please generalise – e.g. an
offline auction)?
a. Did it fetch more money than you paid for it?
b. How did you know it was worth more than you paid, or
that it might do well on eBay?
5. Why did you decide to sell the item on eBay?
a. Had you tried to sell or otherwise dispose of this item by any
other means?
If yes, where/ how?
If not, why not?
b. Was this your first attempt to sell it on eBay?
If yes:
• Why do you think it didn’t sell the first time?
• Did you try any different strategies when selling the item
this time, or was the listing a direct duplicate of
previously?
6. If eBay didn't exist, what would you have done with the item?
Would you have considered any of the below and why?
a. Kept it?
b. Donated it to a charity shop?
c. Another online auction?
d. Traditional auction house?
e. Thrown it away?
f. Sold to an antiques dealer?
g. Given it away to friends/ relatives?
e. Advertised for a private sale via a local/ or specialist paper?
f. Other (please specify)
Listing your item
7. How did you decide to categorise your item?
a. Was there a choice of categories?
b. Did you place your item in more than one category? If yes,
why?
c. How did you decide which one(s) to choose?
8. How did you decide words/ terms to put in the ‘item heading’?
9. What approach did you take to describing this item?
For example:
a. Did you place any 'spin' on how you portrayed the item?
(e.g. vintage, retro, from a particular designer)
If yes,
• Why did you do this?
• Was this ‘spin’ used in the item title, the description or
both?
b. How did you decide, for example:
• The depth of description to use?
• What level of knowledge to offer about the item?
• Whether or not to outline its ‘history’ – for example - why
it’s being sold?
10. In general, not just in terms of this item, do you have a particular
approach when you describe the items you’re selling? How do you
decide:
• The depth of description appropriate?
• The words to use?
• Do you tend to offer opinions about your items?
(e.g. rare, technically good)?
• Do you tend to offer any information about biography/
history/ provenance of the item - e.g. previous owners, why
you are getting rid of it?
• How much 'knowledge' do you offer about the item?
• Where did you get this information from?
(e.g. Already knew, info sought from elsewhere e.g. books,
Internet)
11. What approach do you generally take regarding photographing
your items?
• Same approach regardless of the item-type? Why/ why not?
• Do you always use a photo? Why/ why not?
• Do you always/ ever use gallery shots? Why/ why not?
Money matters
12. How did you decide on the start price/ reserve?
a. Were any of these influential?:
• Did this amount correspond in any way, to how much you
‘valued’ the item?
• Based on a desire for cheaper eBay fees?
• Restrictions posed by an eBay free (or cheaper) listing
day?
• Typical starting prices for similar items on eBay?
• Prices on other auction sites?
• Based on completed or current eBay items which are the
same/ similar?
• Based on value guides (e.g. Miller's guides)?
b. Did you or were you tempted to use a buy-it-now price in
addition to/ instead of an auction format? Why/ why not?
13. If you specified a reserve price, why did you do this?
a. Is this a strategy you would typically use or do you consider a
reserve only appropriate for certain items? Why?
b. If you use a reserve, is this applied any special way? For
example, do you do any of the following and why?
• Do you hint at the reserve in your description?
• Do you tend to set the reserve very close or a lot higher
than your start price?
14.
Regarding the final price of the current item, did you expect (or
hope) to get more for the item?
a. What price were you expecting and why/ what was this
expectation based on?
b. Given that your expectation was higher than the price actually
attained, would you do anything differently, in terms of where to
sell, when to sell, and how to sell the item?
15. Did you get more than you expected for the item?/ Why do you
think this was?
Your eBay identity
16. Does your username relate to what you sell?
• If yes, why?
• If not, does it have any other significant meaning to you?
17. Do you have an ‘about me’ page (biographical page hosted by
eBay)?/ Why? Why not?
Thank you for completing this survey, we really do appreciate it. To see how we
are using your data, go to:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/chimera/eBay/login.asp?url=/chimera/eBay/Default.htm
User name: eBayuser
Password: krov6MOSL
(These are case sensitive).
I will be updating the dissemination section as soon as things happen.
Best wishes and thanks,
Becky
____________________________________________
Dr Rebecca Ellis
Chimera
Institute for Socio-Technical Research & Innovation
University of Essex
________________________________________
E: [email protected]
T: +44(0) 1473 632240
M: 07909 895905
F: 01473 614936
Adastral Park, PP1 Ross Building,
Martlesham Heath, Ipswich IP5 3RE
_________________________________________