Extreme Market Board Undercutting is a Problem. Who ultimately benefits from this?

[Kokonji]

I'm pretty sure buyer will benefit from this undercut... .-.
you know, buyer will always goes for the cheapest item first...

in this free market, you couldn't stop undercut...
because, well... undercutter will undercut because there's market in undercut...
either the actual buyer...
or the salty seller who get undercut and madly buy the undercut item to sell them at higher place... .-.

[Melichoir]

If you see someone hyper undercutting the market average, just list it at market average. If the item has a stable average, the undercuts will be bought out and resold at a higher price eventually and yours will sell with a slight bit of tweaking for competition.

If the average price is unstable, then youre gonna have to take a risk on it. Either buy out and artificially jack up the price to keep it high and hope someone buys it before things get to hectic or compete with a lower price thats low but maybe not to low. This is all just part of dealing with the MB. I think if SE were to go in and artificially change pricings and interfere with players setting the price, its gonna screw things up way worse down the road.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

People selling things their retainers got them for free benefit from a quick sale. But if Ishgard restoration is anything like Doman restoration then you'll see those go away and it'll mostly just be bots. Who can sell stuff for barely anything and still profit. :\

[Ishgardian]

As someone who recently got into crafting and gathering and leveled everything up to an extent, I've been spending a lot more time selling items on the MB. Now, I've gotten in a groove with certain things that sell well, and I am making a humble 60-100k per day on average, sometimes more sometimes less.

However, I've noticed that EXTREME and I mean EXTREME undercutting seems to run rampant on the MB. Who benefits from this really? I've seen items that were selling for 8,000-$15,000 Gil comfortably, plummet to 100 Gil or less because several people jump on the massive undercutting bandwagon. In the end...NO ONE makes any money, so what good comes from it?

I have to wonder are these people who are all maxed crafters and gatherers with millions in the bank and just simply don't care about tanking the entire MB pricing structure or are these new crafters so desperate to make a Gil they will take anything.

One way I've gotten around this is by buying up all the extremely low listings and re-selling them higher and just taking over the MB for that particular item, but this, of course, is a gil investment and there's no guarantee I will make it back. Thankfully, it has usually worked in my favor.

It is frustrating though.

I don't know which market exactly you are involved in (and it doesn't matter) but have also in mind that there is lately this trend of some people opening their wallet, moving an alt to Japanese Data Centres for three days and then coming back to sell what they bought there filthy cheap.

They do it constantly in an attempt to take over MB for certain items.

[Deceptus]

If you see someone hyper undercutting the market average, just list it at market average. If the item has a stable average, the undercuts will be bought out and resold at a higher price eventually and yours will sell with a slight bit of tweaking for competition.

If the average price is unstable, then youre gonna have to take a risk on it. Either buy out and artificially jack up the price to keep it high and hope someone buys it before things get to hectic or compete with a lower price thats low but maybe not to low. This is all just part of dealing with the MB. I think if SE were to go in and artificially change pricings and interfere with players setting the price, its gonna screw things up way worse down the road.

This. If you see severe undercutting it's people trying desperately to offload.

[Vahlnir]

Then I will continue to buy them all up and re-sell them at 300x the price. Also, I can understand with a popular item this happening. But what I've noticed is like 2-3 people will extremely undercut and then everyone just follows suit, which basically saps all value from the item.

You can keep buying things up and reselling them, but if there's an overabundance of an item or if the price is simply something people aren't willing to pay in a timely fashion, then the price will go back down regardless. Most everyone undercuts, even if it's by 1 gil, because people want to make gil. I undercut as well. Sometimes it is by 1, sometimes it is by 500 or more. But I usually only undercut massively if an item doesn't sell after a few days have passed. Then I just slash all my prices (usually by at least half but usually more) so I can post more things on the MB sooner. It works, and works well.

[YojimboM]

Oh boy another undercutting thread my favorite! I undercut all the time, I just want my stuff to sell fast ( and this is the case for most players that do undercut ).

I don't care if my profit margin isn't huge, I'm still rolling in gillions. If someone wants to buy my cheaper items to try to relist, that's fine with me... I'm just going to keep listing more. I only craft and gather in game, I don't raid so I have time.

You know you're just losing money that way, right? Unless you only undercut by 1. Lowering a price drastically doesn't actually speed up sales. It's just like real life. When people want to buy something, they already have the money for it. If it isn't selling it's because there is no demand, not because it's too expensive.

If you do undercut drastically and get resellers buying your items instead, then you're creating a market bubble that won't last, and you just murder your own market for a long time and lose even more money.

All of the people with warped views on how markets work end up ruining it for everyone and themselves for the sake of being impatient and trying to fart out as many sales as they can instead of making real money.

[Genjuro]

Hrm.. buy item at 100 gil, sells item at 15,000 gil. I benefitted!

[Kleeya]

You know you're just losing money that way, right? Unless you only undercut by 1. Lowering a price drastically doesn't actually speed up sales. It's just like real life. When people want to buy something, they already have the money for it. If it isn't selling it's because there is no demand, not because it's too expensive.

Lol what. I dont know in what ig and irl worlds you are living where there is no poor people, and where everybody is swimming in so much money that they can afford everything they want for normal or high prices, but it is not the same as mine XD

[Ultimatecalibur]

You know you're just losing money that way, right? Unless you only undercut by 1. Lowering a price drastically doesn't actually speed up sales. It's just like real life. When people want to buy something, they already have the money for it. If it isn't selling it's because there is no demand, not because it's too expensive.

You are wrong there. Lower prices can increase sales because buyers can have very different preferred purchase prices and purchase price limits. Something like a mount will sell slower when priced at 20 million than it will at 5 million and both will sell slower than those priced at 900 thousand even without a change in supply. Demand in general can be high for an object but high prices can shrink the number of buyers willing to make a purchase.

Undercutting by 1 gil or even 1% of the standard price won't noticable increase speed of sale, but a decrease of 5% or more likely will unless their is low or no demand for an object.