EBay: What the Heck is a TSE?

A new phrase and its companion acronym made its debut in the earnings call the other day: The Tailored Shopping Experience or TSE. This is the first time I’ve heard such emphasis on the “Tailored” Shopping Experience coming from eBay. It was mentioned 8 times in the transcript and provides a glimpse into the eBay of the future. 

Quote from Bob Swan, eBay CFO – “Obviously, Express is a very important TSE for us to get more share of wallet. We want to continue to look at other categories that we think we can expand our tailored offering to grow within those and potentially new categories.”  Meg Whitman also said  “As you recall, eBay Express is a tailored shopping experience for the convenience-oriented shopper. We were targeting existing buyers to increase the share of wallet. "

I thought eBay stores were supposed to be a TSE for the convenience-oriented shopper all they needed to do was promote them. If they had made store inventory the listing “feeder” for eBay Express as they originally planned and promoted Express as the platform for eBay stores the turmoil over fee increases would have died down quickly.

My impression, when eBay launched Express earlier this year, was they were going after new customers not “more share of wallet” from existing customers. What was the point of spending millions of dollars on those poorly produced Express ads then? Ina Steiner has an interesting take regarding this change in focus at her blog so I won’t spend much time on this. I want to continue discussing this TSE idea.