As soon as in March we in Russia will see a localized version of eBay. The company says they hope to increase the share of Russian buyers and overall sales via this dedicated local version. In fact, eBay is making a serious push to the European market as it adds five more countries and languages to its portfolio of localized versions - so it makes a total of six new localizations with Russia.
The countries were chosen based on demand, eBay says. I can definitely confirm that in Russia eBay has already grown popular even without any advertising and with many accompanying restrictions on the road - I know people who have been buying on eBay for a few years now and some of these people signed up for PayPal and opened debit cards in banks specifically to be able to buy things on eBay.
At that the love story between Russian internet users and eBay is quite a peculiar one. eBay has never seemed to do anything to draw customers from Russia yet I know quite a number of web users who only use one international web service - and that will be eBay.
In fact, eBay seemed to do everything to make lives more complicated to the Russian web users, like only accepting PayPal payments for goods. And PayPal is anything but friendly to Russians: the only thing we can do is link a credit card to our personal accounts and send money directly from the cards - no options to receive money but as a refund if a transaction fails for some reason. But at that I do know people who only created PayPal accounts to be able to buy things from eBay as it was the only way for them to use eBay at all.
At that it is obvious that Russian internet entrepreneurs have not stayed idle here throughout all these years - so we have plenty of internet auctions here in Russia that copy eBay business model and do more or less well locally. And unfortunately (for eBay, I mean), I strongly doubt that their business will be damaged by eBay entering the market.
The thing is that eBay seems to think that translating their web interface is sufficient to have sales to Russia boost. The decision to keep PayPal as the only payment option can hardly be described as a wise one - after all, local auctions provide multiple payment options that local users are much better familiar with. And they also have an additional benefit of having local sellers mostly so you don’t send your money to someone in India for a gadget that our unreliable postal service will probably never deliver at all.
Besides, the overall list of limitations for the soon to be launched localized Russian version is pretty extensive. In addition to having to deal with PayPal, Russian users will be unable to bid so only fixed-price items will be available for them to buy (not to mention the usual worldwide shipping limitation).
Another complication is that with the localized version eBay is only targeting one segment - buyers but totally forgets about sellers. And as I’ve mentioned above, Russian users cannot receive money on PayPal so they will be unable to sell anything at all. And what’s the point in an online auction that is so limited that you can’t sell anything and can’t bid on anything?
So the only thing that eBay will offer (with no local support as the company only hired a PR agency to help with promotion) is its international reputation, Russian currency for prices and a convenient web interface. The only thing that could actually boost sales and ensure a solid business for eBay here is full support of PayPal but this is too much to ask as I know how complicated financial regulations are in this country. Time will tell but for now I think eBay needs to do way more to succeed here.
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