Ebay Survey Says Americans Buy Crap They Don't Want

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

J. Michael Arrington (born March 13, 1970 in Huntington Beach, California) is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of TechCrunch, a blog covering startups and technology news. Arrington attended Claremont McKenna College (BA Economics, 1992) and Stanford Law School (JD, 1995) and practiced as a corporate and securities lawyer at two law firms: O’Melveny & Myers and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich... → Learn More

kijiji-logo.pngThis inbox item caught my eye. Ebay commissioned a survey on behalf of their fast growing Kijiji product (it competes with and engages in litigation with Craigslist).

The survey revealed surprising (I use the term sarcastically) facts such as:

  • 90% of Americans have at least one unused item lying around the house
  • Unused electronics items can be found in more than 2/3 of households (70%)
  • 38% of men are holding onto old electronics, compared to 35% of women

Want to sell that junk? You won’t get much for it. The average purchase price and resale value is below. Ebay turns those lemons into lemonade though: “Although you may not get much money back in some cases, it’s better than nothing – especially in these tough economic times. And we all know how quickly the value of electronics depreciates, so those poor saps holding onto their first-generation iPhones should probably unload them ASAP!”

Get that stuff on Kijiji pronto! On a side note, I wish we had unlimited amounts of money to commission random surveys.

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