A good friend of mine sold products on eBay without any competition from any other sellers for years. However, recently several competitors entered the market and started selling the same items as him.

This situation is one of the reasons why I don't recommend selling products on eBay unless you can be sure of exclusivity. It's very common for copycat sellers to appear on the scene and grab a slice of the market, because they've already seen you profit from it.

Fortunately, sometimes these copycat sellers are not the ‘sharpest knives in the drawer' as it were, and they can be forced to move on by being more creative and utilizing ‘renegade' techniques.
So we brainstormed the situation together, and one of the most successful strategies he implemented was to create bundles of products so that all of his listings were different from the other sellers.

In marketing this is referred to as the ‘apples to oranges' comparison. In other words, prospective buyers can't make a direct comparison between offerings because they know it's not a like for like, ‘apples to apples' comparison.

Using creative bundling, adding high perceived value bonuses that cost you little or nothing to offer, can transform a business that's been the ‘victim' of copycat selling.

This is a strategy that you don't often see used in the retail world, even though it's incredibly powerful. However, I looked around for you and I did find a couple of examples to show you. In the example below from Staples, you can see how they bundled products by adding free bonuses to an existing product.



As you probably know, all the Sunday paper advertising inserts from all the major electronics chains promote the latest DVD releases each week. ‘Apples to Apples' again. Think about it. What would make someone buy the movie from one store compared with another if the price was the same, which it usually is? Well, someone in the WalMart marketing office got their act together by bundling the DVD movie ‘Dejavu' with a bonus ‘behind the scenes' DVD. They also did a smart thing by using stickers to prominently indicate that the pack was exclusive to WalMart. There's no question this was a successful strategy, and the hard cost of manufacturing that extra DVD was probably less than 50 cents.

Exhibit 1 shows the special twin pack, with the ‘Exclusive' sticker in the middle, and the ‘Exclusive DVD' graphic on the top right.

Exhibit 2 shows an example from eBay of a seller who's selling a commodity item with lots of competition - a camcorder. Notice how they've created a bundle with tapes, a tripod, lenses, carrying case, filters etc. Now it's a ‘camcorder value pack' that's sold for a premium price. The seller removed the problematic ‘apples to apples' comparison and added additional appealing items.

Exhibit 3 shows a seller who has bundled a group of associated cell phone accessories rather than selling them individually.

If you're in a competitive niche where others sell the same products as you, I encourage you to implement this renegade strategy.

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