Few reseller decisions are as deceptively simple as lowering a price.
An item has not sold.
Do you cut it?
Wait?
Send an offer?
Put it on sale?
Accept the next reasonable offer that comes along?
Or leave the price exactly where it is?
There are sellers at both extremes. Some become so attached to an original asking price that reducing it feels like admitting they were wrong. Others react to every slow week by cutting prices throughout the store.
Neither approach is especially useful.
Price is a business tool.
It should change when the market evidence and the economics justify changing it—not because Tuesday was slow, and not because you once decided an item ought to be worth a particular amount.
For resellers dealing in antiques, collectibles, books, estate merchandise, ephemera, household goods, and one-off inventory, this gets particularly complicated. There often is no single manufacturer’s suggested retail price. Condition varies. Supply varies. Demand varies. Sometimes there are excellent comparable sales, and sometimes the closest comparison is only vaguely similar.
That makes strategic pricing less about following a formula and more about knowing which evidence matters.
Continue reading “When Should You Lower the Price on eBay? A Reseller’s Guide to Strategic Markdowns”