Note: This is completely subjective…and your results will differ.
Methodology:
-I searched for ‘TMX Elmo’ (not any other derivation).
-I’m only looking for the English speaking version.
-If I found more than one merchant listing, I only counted it once.
-I count eBay, Amazon Marketplace, and Y! Auction listings once.
-I only looked at the first 2 pages of results because I think that’s all most people look at.
-I did this search yesterday, so results will be different.
-I didn’t refine (set a price range).
-I don’t use auction sites…if I want to bid on an auction, I’ll go to eBay.
If you want a TMX Elmo (English version), go to Shopzilla or Yahoo! Shopping. Shopzilla has 5 unique seller listings for the TMX Elmo, all in stock. Yahoo! Shopping has 8 unique seller listings (including one from Y! Auctions), with 7 out of the 8 in stock. Also, Yahoo! Shopping’s first result gives me what I want – a SKUd up matrix (even though there are 2 duplicates and one out of stock listing).
My next suggestion would be to head to PriceGrabber. PriceGrabber has 35 unique sellers listings (34 StoreFront listings), but it’s not clear on all the Storefront listings if Elmo will speak English or Spanish. And while I submitted a couple questions, in the game of holiday shopping, I’m not sure how many parents are going to have time to ask that question.
Notes:
-Shopzilla does a good job of SKUing up the listings, but they need to separate the English and Spanish versions.
-Shopzilla should NOT send you to this page first. Are they just going for Google AdSense revenue?
-Yahoo! Shopping does an ok job of SKUing up and then goes on to list the same SKUd up listings and others (they should clean this up – although I was told last year that customers wanted it this way)
-Yahoo! Shopping has tons of Y! Auction listings (which I found annoying)
-PriceGrabber says they have 43 sellers on the search results page, but only has 35 sellers on the detail page.
-Almost all the engines had trouble with out of stock listings or expired eBay listings
-Shopwiki has 10+ seller listings, with 8 in stock, but the listings aren’t SKUd up well…and I’m still trying to figure out what this listing is doing in the search results. Also, there were a couple affiliate listings (besttoydiscounts) which were annoying as well at least one bad link (gifttoys.net)
-Froogle had 9 listings with 6 in stock, but only go there if you’re willing to put up with a lot of auctions and Barbie Loves Elmo listings.
-TheFind has tons of listings (10+), but the first 4 are for Barbie Loves Elmo, only 5 of the first 12 Elmo listings I checked were in stock, and in the end, that Barbie Loves Elmo product got really annoying.
-Windows Product Search Live made a strong showing in terms of total number of results, but the products weren’t well organized and once again I ran into a ton of auctions.
I’ve gotten about 30 questions about when I’m doing a side by side comparison for holiday shopping. If you have suggestions of things you want me to look at, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll probably just do more mini-comparisons like this.
