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Alex Marks - Head of Marketing for eBay, talks to Elena Nikolova about online shopping trends and new markets.

Alex is a cheerful and extremely friendly man, which helped break the ice right away. He admits he didn’t want a career in marketing, but what interested him most in marketing were people and how they behave, which is the most important thing about advertising. Sad about TV ad sales going down and giving way to online? Of course not! He shares he is a huge cynic of a lot of creative advertising but he enjoys the fact that you can get some incredible stuff on all sorts of platforms. “I think the point to make here is that at the moment we differentiate between TV, press, radio and online when content is what we are looking for. Content is moving between screens – mobile, PC, television. Different content, different screens, different experiences. Is it all television? I don’t know.”

eBay is the biggest and most famous online store. And now that online shopping is global as opposed to local, are you assisting your clients in any way to facilitate their selling experience?

Well, it varies by market but for example in Germany and the UK we have relationships with the national post and with companies, which distribute the packaging itself, so we have good relationships. They want to be with us because they get business from our sellers and that relationship is very tight.

Is it just a relationship or do you actually have agreements with them?

There are some contracts of sorts. Their relationship with us is a commercial one, so they are taking advantage of the fact that we have big customer base. As part of this relationship we also want to ensure that our sellers are sending things easily. So there is an incentive for everyone – to work and to make sure everything happens properly. I imagine there are things that a contractor does in order to cover sudden eventualities but I don’t know the exact details. But suffice to say, it’s in the interest of those companies to provide good service.

Does eBay provide any statistical information to its clients, who want to open an e-shop?

It depends, if you are a small business then you would have information on who visits your sites, if you are a big retailer, it is as much a pressure on us to sell to them. To say ‘Hey come and use eBay, it’s good for your brand and business, because of 1, 2, 3’. Yes, in this case we use information to help them make a decision.

The Bulgarian market is still small but growing fast. The situation is pretty much the same in Greece. What are your plans for this region?

Well, in Greece we have already bought the .gr domain so we are in a process of planning. I don’t know specifically what our plans for Bulgaria are. But the fact that the market might be too small to invest in now doesn’t mean it won’t grow and be investable in the future. So I think with all that, it is a question of when the time is right. Different businesses will look and decide whether it is the right time to enter for them. So I don’t know if we are going to invest in Bulgaria now or next year or in two years but if the Bulgarian market continues to grow, which it will, then at some point eBay will be looking at it.

What do you believe will make Bulgarians and Greeks shop more online?  What can convince them that going to shop online is the same as going to the store – we will end up with the same good in hand?

If you look at other markets, as the UK for example, 5-6 years ago buying things online was not a frequent occurrence, because there was an issue of trust – ‘people are gonna steal my money, I’m not gonna get the right good, it’s run by idiots’ (laughs). And now eBay takes £100 million every week in the UK, so the market changes. One is the infrastructure – access to broadband internet and second - businesses start thinking of it as another distribution channel. Once the people are there, businesses will start going there, because they’ll think ‘well, people are spending more and more time online. This could be another outlet for me.’ I mean, it grows organically and it doesn’t happen overnight, as it didn’t happen in the UK overnight. But suddenly you look back 5 years ago and you think ‘No one was buying anything or downloading music’. And 5 years later you think ‘My God, it is incredible! And you don’t even realize what has happened, because suddenly trust grows.’ Both markets offer slightly different benefits. The market will find a level between bricks and water and the online. There will be a finite number of money in the economy and the market will find its level. If you look in different markets – the same changes are occurring and the same will happen in Bulgaria and Greece, probably even Iran (laughs).

OK, it is a trend but people can buy books and DVDs online. How do you create the trust to start buying clothes without even trying them?

Well, people in the UK were exactly the same and now they are not. They still like going to stores but that’s a different experience, which cannot be replicated online. No one should be frightened that people will not shop in stores anymore. Because stores and online stores offer different things and different benefits and some goods, depending on the market, will thrive and others won’t. Look at cars for example, which are still small online. I bought my last car online without even trying it! Because I know that all cars now work, they don’t break down, they don’t rust, (laughs) so I just said ‘I’ll have that one’ and I bought it. Things like that start happening gradually.