Giving stiff competition to the Groupon Inc, a lifestyle services company, eBay has come out with Lifestyle Deals, the offers for running lifestyle services for its clients. While eBay was mainly into providing services, it is recently under expansion plans where it is mulling over the inclusion of local services as well.
As per the reports, the online market for deals on local services is a multi-billion dollar industry and eBay is fast realizing this fact. Having been a premier place for the provision of products for sale or purchase, eBay is now foraying into providing attractive lifestyle deals for local services. The organization is redesigning its website with features that are present on Facebook with a view to increase sales.
eBay has named its service as Lifestyle Deals and it currently offers deals on local services in urban areas like Washington D.C., San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Some of the services included under the lifestyle deals are one-hour dog-walking service, private gym sessions and yoga classes for a month. Other services are going to be included soon depending upon the response for these efforts.
President of eBay Marketplaces, Devin Wenig told Reuters that it was the perfect time for the company to experiment something new as the company had established itself in the physical product market. He was of the view that after the physical products, it was right to introduce discounted local services.
eBay signed up with Signpost, a company which arranges the deals with the local merchants and provides them for grabs on the eBay’s online marketplace’s new section. Wenig added that just like other merchants, Signpost too was a merchant that provided services and that it had the liberty to sell local or global services on eBay.
The online local deals market has a huge potential. The US consumers spent nearly $1.8 billion on online deals last year and this was expected to reach $5.5 billion by the end of 2016. The figures stated include the amount spent on daily deals, flash sales, product deals or other discounted online sales channels. However, the total local commerce market was estimated to be around $3 trillion as per Andrew Mason, the Chief Executive of Groupon Inc.
eBay is coming up with the Lifestyle Deals on a new website which would have several new features, the prominent one being the linking of the PayPal and eBay account of the customer to speed up the checkout process. There will be bigger images of products and services and a new “Feed” service which would enable the customers to make suggestions on new products and services.
