Personas for Product Management

Product: eBay Seller Tools

Pete the Power Seller

Background
Pete is a 46-year-old male that lives in Fresno and runs a small motorcycle parts business.  While he does maintain a small brick-and-mortar shop, almost all of his sales come from eBay, where he sells on average 400 items per month.   He sells a wide range of motorcycle related items, but his most popular items are saddlebags for Harley Davidson’s.  He owns two big Harley’s himself, and he also drives a 1993 Toyota Pickup.  Pete is married and has two teenage sons.

Internet Usage
Pete bought his computer primarily so that he could use eBay, and he seldom uses anything except eBay and e-mail.  Pete has been selling on eBay for four years now, and has learned what he needed to in order to effectively sell.  He has a feedback rating of over 5000, which he takes great pride in.

Selling Behaviors
Pete has well-established routines where he lists items to sell on Monday, and most of his auctions end by Friday, and he tries to get the shipments out within a few hours of receiving the payments. When eBay changes things on the site, especially the selling process, it can be very aggravating for him to learn the differences and change his procedures.

Cecilia the Collector

Background
Cecilia is a 38-year-old woman born, raised and still living in the Orlando area.    She is a single-mother with a teenage daughter that lives at home but attends the local community college.  Cecilia works full-time as a teller at a local bank, but her true passion is all things Disney.  She became a collector of Disneyana as a young girl, and she now owns over 2000 items ranging from vintage ticket books to limited edition figurines worth several thousand dollars.

Internet Usage
Cecilia uses a computer at work, and she is comfortable with several forms of online communication, including instant messaging, e-mail, and message boards.  She participates quite actively in an online community of fellow Disneyana collectors.  She initially came to eBay as a buyer in order to find and buy more items, but then she started selling items she no longer wanted in her collection.

Selling Behaviors
The main reason Cecilia sells is to generate cash so she can buy more and increase the value of her overall collection.  She sells roughly 5-10 items a month on average, although sometimes she’ll sell more and sometimes less.  The first time she sold it was quite difficult for her but now she sells with little problem.  She cares about her reputation, but less as a tool for sales as much as a badge of honor among her Disneyana trading friends.  Beyond her eBay reputation, she has built a reputation for helping others honestly assess the value of their Disneyana items.

Frank the First-Time Seller

Background
Frank is a 42-year-old Midwesterner currently living in a suburb of Chicago.    He is married with three kids all under 10.  He works as a commodities broker in the city.  He has occasionally bought on eBay (7 purchases in the past year), but almost always uses the “Buy It Now” feature as he uses eBay to find specific items and wants to buy they quickly and is not interested in the competitive bidding aspects.  He has never sold on eBay, but his wife has been after him to clean out the garage and he thinks there are several items that he could successfully sell on eBay.

Internet Usage
Frank is comfortable on the computer, as he is online throughout the day at work mainly on news and information sites but he also buys regularly from Amazon and his favorite retailer, REI.com.  Frank gets over 100 e-mail messages a day, and has a Blackberry for when he’s not at his desk.  While he is very capable using the computer, he likes his interactions to be quick and easy.

Selling Behaviors
Frank wants to list his items on eBay, but he has never done so and doesn’t really know where to begin, or what will be involved.  He has some time on the weekend to do this, but not a lot.  The main thing he’s concerned about is that he knows he’ll need digital photos of all the items, but he has not really done much with the camera before other than some simple shots that he printed.  He has never uploaded photos to any type of site.