The Negotiation API gives sellers the ability to engage in sales negotiations with buyers.
The API currently supports only the ability for sellers to extend offers to buyers who have shown an interest in their listings. The ability to partake in more detailed negotiations will increase as the functionality of the API is expanded.
Technical overview
Buyers show interest in a listing when they add the listing to their Watch list, or when they add the listing to their shopping cart, but abandon the item after a time. Once a buyer shows interest in a listing, they are "eligible" to receive a seller-initiated offer on the items in the listing.
Seller offers to buyers are discounts on select listings, and the offers can be either a percentage off the listing price or a discounted price that is simply a new price that's below the listing's original price.
The Negotiation API currently has methods in a single resource:
- offer
The methods in this resource let sellers:
- Retrieve the set of listings that buyers have actively shown an interest.
- Extend offers to the buyers who have shown an interest in the seller's items.
Business use cases
The Negotiation API supports the use cases outlined below.
For details on how the Negotiation API works and how to implement its methods, see Offers to buyers.
Retrieve the set of a seller's listings that are eligible for a seller-initiated offer
The findEligibleItems method returns the set of items, from a seller's complete set of listings, that buyers have either added to their Watch list or have added to their shopping cart.
Sellers can initiate offers for any of the items for which buyers have shown an interest.
Extend a seller-initiated offer to interested buyers
The sendOfferToInterestedBuyers method is the mechanism that sellers use to initiate a negotiation with buyers.
The method takes a listing ID value (used with the Trading API) and the seller's discount amount. The method then sends all the buyers who have shown an interest in the item a message which contains the seller's offer.
Negotiation API requirements and restrictions
The Negotiation API is available to all eBay sellers and there are no special requirements needed to make requests to the service.
The Negotiations API is, however, restricted to the following eBay marketplaces:
- Australia (
EBAY_AU) - Canada (
EBAY_CA) - France (
EBAY_FR) - Germany (
EBAY_DE) - Great Britain (
EBAY_GB) - Italy (
EBAY_IT) - Spain (
EBAY_ES) - United States (
EBAY_US)
For the Canadian marketplace, both the English and French locales are supported. Use Content-Language header to specify the locale, as described in the Using eBay RESTful APIs document.
Note that the Negotiations API does not support eBay transactions that include motor vehicles.