Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Bad news, From the boards, Press releases, Products and services, Management, Insiders, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising

Shares of e-commerce giant eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) are trading around 7% lower in after hours trading this day following its fourth quarter earnings release shortly after the market close.

As we looked at in our earnings preview, the company has been struggling to keep up with the competition in its auction business. Two key components that have hurt eBay’s auction business are (1) raising fees that have left some of the company’s long term users looking for other venues to do their business, and (2) huge number of fraudulent items on the site.

The company announced that its fourth quarter numbers were actually superior than Wall Street had expected, with earnings per share of 45 cents per share, easily topping the 41 cents that analysts had been expecting to see.

So why is the stock down in after hours trading? Looking ahead the company forecast earnings below what the market had been expecting to see. The company announced that it now is looking to see between 37 and 39 cents for its first quarter, below the 40 cents that Wall Street was hoping to hear.

One of the biggest pieces of news regarding eBay was the announcement that the company’s CEO, Meg Whitman, would be stepping down from her post at the end of March. Taking over for her will be John Donahoe who is currently running the company’s on the web auction business.

eBay users over the past few years have definitely had a love/hate relationship with Whitman, and it will be interesting to see just how well liked her successor finds himself. From a users perspective, eBay users are going to be looking for one main thing… lower fees. Don’t be surprised to see fees coming down once Donahoe takes control.

From a shareholder point of view we should probably anticipate to see the new CEO come with the main goal of reducing overall costs. While anticipating to see overall cost reductions, marketing and advertising should be an area where investments are made. The company is in fierce competition with Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and it needs drastic measures to fend off its most powerful on the web rival.

Lower fees, heavier advertising… what other suggestions would you have for Donahoe as he prepares to take over the reigns in a little under 10 weeks from now? Let us know what changes you would like to see. Whether you are a eBay user, or an eBay investor… what changes would you love to see at eBay?

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer

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Filed under: Products and services, Starbucks (SBUX), Marketing and advertising, McDonald’s (MCD)

As Tom Taulli recently reported on BloggingStocks, Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) is experimenting with new pricing strategies, including $1 cups of coffee and free refills.

This is pretty cool if you’re a consumer — assuming you don’t mind watching lines at the coffee shops grow exponentially in length.

Even as concerns about Starbucks’s growth have emerged, traffic at the shops have stayed strong. Cup of coffee for $1 will bring in more customers, but will also likely cannibalize sales on the more pricey brews. And free refills should encourage people to linger in Starbucks for hours — while still only spending $1.

Starbucks has been a premium brand for its entire existence, and now appears to be gearing up for what amounts to a price war with the likes of Dunkin’ Donuts and McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD). Given McDonald’s size and scale, I doubt that that’s a battle Starbucks can win.

In addition, I don’t think it’s a battle it should be fighting. Going from a premium brand to a commodity offering isn’t a good way to keep returns strong. It might not be a good way to grow sales, but Starbucks’s ideal bet might be to tell McDonald’s, “You can have the budget-conscious consumers — we’re gonna stay high-end and take advantage of our strong brand to charge premium prices.”

As Tom Taulli stated, it may be that Starbucks doesn’t really have a choice given the in-roads McDonald’s is making, but if offering $1 coffees is Starbucks’s new strategy, I am not impressed.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Marketing and advertising, Whole Foods Market (WFMI), Green Stocks

Whole Foods Market (NASDAQ: WFMI) is banning plastic bags from its 270 locations. The switch to a choice between reusable bags and paper will take effect on Earth Day, April 22.

It’s certainly a bold move and demonstrates a lot of concern for the environment. It will also spruce up Whole Foods’ image as an environmentally-conscious retailer and generate a ton of free publicity for the company, starting with the New York Times story.

Whole Foods has served as a trend-setter for the bigger grocery chains, and this move could inspire stores like Kroger (NYSE: KR) and Safeway (NYSE: SWY) to make similar switches, depending on how it works out.

During its trial runs, Whole Foods found that eliminating plastic only led to a 10% increase in paper bag use, demonstrating that consumers tend to switch to the reusable bags.

That’s good for the environment, and it also cuts costs: Even Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) has taken notice by phasing in reusable bags as a third option. The plastic bag seems destined for obsolescence.

The 21st century may be the end of the “Plastics, young man!” era.

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Treasurys stall after initial surge
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Filed under: E-mail, Productivity

According to Webcredible, a usability and accessibility consultancy, the most requested mobile service people wanted on their data-enabled mobile phones was email. 33% of respondents said email was their most needed mobile utility. This may offer some explanation as to why the iPhone is the number 2 smartphone behind RIM. Business users, who still dominate the smartphone market, want access to email to get their business done.

Access to social networks came in a close second in requested features, taking 25% in survey results. This tells us that many mobile phone users like to hop on MySpace or Facebook in between sending all those emails. As adoption of social networks becomes more mainstream, we expect social networking will take over as the number one requested mobile feature.

As a last statistic, local information requests were third on the list at 20%. These requests consist of questions such as “what’s around me?” With services such as Google Maps My Location, which tracks your location in a GPS-like service, local information requests a fantastic tool to have access to. With friends and you want to find the closest pizza place, with My Location you can easily look it up and get your pie eating on.

These mobile services add countless features to your daily working life, especially for nomadic mobile phone users. What is your favorite mobile service? We look forward to seeing the comments!

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