ePID K-Type eBay. How to use ePID and K-Type in selling automotive and motorcycle parts on eBay?
Automotive and motorcycle parts have a very large share in eBay sales, and eBay Motors, the automotive section, is a great place to sell and buy new and used automotive and motorcycle parts, as well as complete vehicles.
Parts sellers often have dozens or even hundreds of thousands of part numbers in their inventory. Practically every mechanical vehicle requires regular maintenance and replacement of wear parts, and sometimes breakdowns simply occur.
Due to usually lower prices or unavailability of parts in other sales channels, buyers decide to purchase parts on eBay. The problem during such purchases can be choosing a part that will fit a specific vehicle, meaning its make, model, production year, engine version, and body type.
To make shopping easier for customers and streamline listing preparation for sellers, eBay offers two types of automotive and motorcycle parts cataloging: ePID and KType.
ePID is mainly used on ebay.de and ebay.co.uk, while K-Type is used on eBay.com.
ePID and KType are simply numbers assigned to a specific vehicle, car, or motorcycle.
In the file provided by eBay with K-Type numbers, it looks like this:
In this entry, the value 117198 is the KType. So parts assigned the number 117198 will fit a car that meets these conditions:
– make and model: Ford Edge
– type: SUV
– production years: 2014-2019, specifically 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 – because some part might fit this vehicle from years 2014, 2015, and 2019, but not from 2016 and 2017
– version 2.0 TDCi Biturbo, AWD drive
– Diesel engine with 1997cm^3 displacement and 210HP power
How Does it Work from the Buyer’s Perspective?
When searching for car or motorcycle parts, buyers can use eBay’s vehicle parts matching tool. You just need to specify the vehicle exactly:
-make
-model
-production year
-body version
-engine version
and eBay will show only those parts in the results that fit the selected vehicle.
So buyers provide the data that is in the MVL file with KType codes. For the previously used Ford Edge vehicle to describe the contents of the MVL file, it looks like this:
So make, model, year, type, engine, and eBay will match only those parts that actually fit based on this information.
Buyers can both search for a specific part and display all parts that fit their car.
Sellers often add the same product to eBay dozens of times, or even hundreds of times (I know such cases), each time adding different compatible vehicles in the title and description. All to ensure that a part that fits many vehicles is visible to as many people as possible, depending on which vehicle it’s being searched for.
Although eBay doesn’t allow multiple listings of the same product within one site, for many sellers this is the only way to reach customers.
The solution can be using the parts matching method with Epid or K-Type. Buyers increasingly search for parts through matching. Therefore, it’s enough to prepare a listing with a title that contains the most popular models the part fits, and add all the others through numbers contained in MVL or MML.
This is what an example listing using parts compatibility looks like:
Why is it Worth Using Parts Matching by ePID or KType Number?
Benefits for buyers:
- buyers save a lot of time searching and browsing listings, and possibly sending emails with questions to the seller
- buyers have certainty that they will buy the right part
Benefits for sellers:
- seller creates highest quality listings perfectly matching buyer queries
- reduction in the number of listings with the same product
- fewer returns, because buyers will choose the product they actually need
- fewer compatibility questions, because buyers see which vehicles the part fits and whether their vehicle is on that list
- fewer empty listing visits, but more visits ending in purchase, so conversion increases, which results in: conversion increase -> higher listing value for eBay’s engine -> sales increase
The vehicle list with codes is provided by eBay in excel files:
- Master Vehicle List (MVL) for cars
- Master Motorcycle List (MML) for motorcycles
In the next article, I will describe adding ePID or KType numbers to eBay listings, especially using the M2E Pro plugin.
