eBay is fast moving away from its roots as an online auction site and becoming an electronic-commerce site, president and CEO Meg Whitman said today at a press conference.

More than a third of sales on eBay sites are bought instantly at fixed prices rather than through the online auctions that established its reputation, she said. “Globally, 34 percent of the gross merchandise value of sales are settled through the ‘Buy It Now’ fixed price format,” she told journalists. The total value of sales on eBay was more than $10 billion over the last three quarters.

The trend in sales is driven by the need to satisfy “convenience-orientated buyers” who do not want to wait for the end of an auction period to see if they had bought an item or who do not want to run the risk of losing the item, Whitman said. She highlighted eBay’s plans to launch a new service called eBay Express that would further encourage the trend by collecting all items for sale at fixed prices in one place.

Posted: 02|8|06 at 8:37 am. Filed under: Auction News.