Mercari Seller Survey Raises Questions About Fee Changes, Average Order Values
UPDATE 12-9-24
Liz Morton
Mercari is finally backtracking on fee changes it made earlier this year, announcing new fee structure that splits fees between buyers and sellers will take effect January 6, 2025.
Mercari recently sent a survey out to sellers, raising questions about whether controversial fee changes might be reversed as average order values and GMV continue downward trend.
The site has struggled since shifting the fee burden from sellers to buyers in March, with many saying sales have tanked as a result and Mercari desperately testing tweaks to the program to try to stem the tide of abandoned carts from sticker shock at checkout.
Liz Morton
Competitor Poshmark also recently jumped on the fee-shifting bandwagon, but reversed course after ~3 weeks of massive pushback from both buyers and sellers, announcing they would be reverting back to the old fee structure on October 27.
Liz Morton
After ~7 months of user complaints about the new fee structure, not to mention a layoff of ~45% of US staff, Mercari is facing increasing pressure from their shareholders in Japan to address the continued woeful underperformance and lack of GMV growth of their US marketplace.
CEO Shintaro Yamada told investors in September while they had seen growth fueled by the general ecommerce pandemic bump, that growth was not sustainable, resulting in negative GMV in the US for the last 3 years.
Yamada when on to explain they had "reorganized their cost structure" and made "made wide-reaching changes to our fee model" in order to address the negative GMV trend, but had not reaped the benefit of those efforts.
Interestingly, he also admitted that the new fee structure seems to be driving an increase in lower average order values with higher priced items being passed up due to the fees at checkout.
Some have even suggested Mercari may eventually look to close or sell off the US business if performance does not improve, and while Yamada does not go that far, he does at least allow for the possibility that entering into a partnership with another company could be one avenue they may explore.
Which brings us back to the survey being sent out this week, which sellers are discussing on Reddit, revealing many of the questions were specifically about fees and average item prices.
I got a survey from Mercari asking specifically about the 0% seller fee policy. Did anyone else get it too?
Think they're starting to rethink the change, a la Posh?
I got one - all the questions were about seller free vs buyer fees. Different from the ones I've got in the past.
Maybe they will pull their heads out of their butts before thanksgiving. Time is ticking. I don't have much hope.
Finally a chance for a robot to read my frustrations!
Asking about sales after the fee restructure. I truly hope my feedback actually gets to someone. Wrote full paragraphs explaining the drop in sales, rampant scammers and how I wont list anything over $30 on Mercari due to the fees almost doubling a buyers out of pocket etc.
They need to change the policy back or at the very least stop the money grab and make it more buyer friendly. I used to only sell on Mercari, 3 years, I’ve had to move back to eBay, which I loath but my sales have balanced. Hope more of you got this and are voicing your concerns!
Did they ask specific stuff? They asked about noticing that I put prices under $10...So odd to me that that's what they're focused on though. Like what are you doing with the info of my under $10 listings.
Just came here to see if anyone else got the survey. I also gave them an earful about buyer’s fees and scams. I hope they listen and act on it.
If Mercari does eventually reverse course, that may put even more pressure on eBay to reconsider their plans to introduce buyer fees in the UK in 2025 - though in the recent Q3 earnings report, eBay CEO Jamie Iannone said they were confident the UK market would tolerate buyers fees but had no plans to bring them to the US any time soon.
Did you receive this survey from Mercari? If so, I'd love to hear more about what the questions were about - leave a comment below or contact me!
