The Wall Street Journalreports that General Motors is ending its short experiment to sell new cars in California through eBay. The experiment generated lots of traffic but it didn't help sell many new vehicles.
The companies declined to say how many cars were sold under the heavily advertised program, although GM said the number of sales directly connected to the effort was small. "We thought the program was successful but that this was not the right time," GM sales chief Mark LaNeve said.
Mr. LaNeve said the program did generate customer interest, including 1.5 million visits to a special section of eBay's Web site, and 15,000 customer leads for California dealers. He said GM hopes to try again with eBay next year.
When the program launched Aug. 11, GM Chief Executive Frederick "Fritz" Henderson said it was part of an effort to make car shopping more convenient.
Rob Chesney, vice president of eBay Motors, said he was "really pleased" with the results and would use lessons from the program to develop future programs for selling new cars on the site. He declined to say when or how that might happen. "We had no expectations in terms of what the measured result would be," Mr. Chesney said. The test was to see "if we offer consumers a new way to interact with the purchase of a car, would they engage?" The traffic to the site, he said, proves "there is a real proposition that we can build upon there."
The article said the GM car listings on eBay generated some low-ball offers from customers that dealers had to waste time sifting through. GM allowed the experiment to run for just 45 days.
