Internet Auction Systems

R esearch on bidding in auctions has generally relied on the assumption of self-interested bidders. This work relaxes that assumption in the context of charity auctions. Because understanding charitable motives has important implications for auction design and charities' fundraising strategies, this study investigates bidders' specific types of charitable motives and the strength of these motives. We carry out three controlled field experiments consisting of real-life auctions conducted on a local Internet auction site. We use a novel design in which we simultaneously run charity and noncharity auctions for identical products and vary the percentage donated to charity. Results show that auctions with proceeds donated to charity lead to significantly higher selling prices, a result due to a higher bidding by bidders with charitable motives rather than to increased bidder entry. We also find that increased prices only occur when the charitable donation is a percentage of the auction revenue, and that a fixed charitable donation associated with each auction has no effect on prices. Furthermore, we find that prices are increasing in the percentage donated to charity. We find considerable support for a model of voluntary shill-like bidding, where charitable bidders try to increase proceeds in charity auctions. We also find that auctions with 25% of revenue donated to charity had higher net revenue than noncharity auctions. Hence, companies may be able to use charity auctions as part of a corporate social responsibility strategy and at the same time increase profitability even though they donate part of the proceeds to charity.

Internet marketing is a field that is continuing to grow, and the online auction concept may be defining a totally new and unique distribution alternative. Very few studies have examined auction sellers and their internet marketing strategies. This research examines the internet auction phenomenon as it relates to the marketing mix of online auction sellers. The data in this study indicate that, whilst there is great diversity among businesses that utilise online auctions, distinct cost leadership and differentiation marketing strategies are both evident. These two approaches are further distinguished in terms of the internet usage strategies employed by each group.

RESUMO Este traballo aborda desde unha perspectiva de análise socio-política o contexto anterior á autonomía de Galiza e a evolución inmediata das políticas públicas galegas unha vez instaurado o Estado autonómico co obxectivo de comprender a situación presente da nosa cultura. Ao mesmo tempo expón con detalle o actual concepto de industrias culturais e fai un repaso das estratexias desenvolvidas na nosa comunidade por parte do sector como mecanismo para garantir a viabilidade e autonomía dos proxectos de contido cultural. palabras chave: Industria cultural galega, políticas públicas culturais, actual contexto cultural de Galiza, iniciativas culturais galegas.
RESUMEN Este trabajo aborda desde una perspectiva de análisis socio-político el contexto anterior a la autonomía de Galicia y la evolución inmediata de las políticas públicas gallegas una vez instaurado el Estado autonómico con el objetivo de comprender la situación presente de nuestra cultura. Al mismo tiempo expone con detalle el actual concepto de industrias culturales y hace un repaso de las estrategias desarrolladas en nuestra comunidad por parte del sector como mecanismo para garantizar la viabilidad y la autonomía de los proyectos culturales. palabras clave: Industria cultural gallega, políticas públicas culturales, actual contexto cultural de Galicia, iniciati-vas culturales gallegas.
ABSTRACT Based on a socio-political analysis perspective, this work is about the state before the autonomy of Galicia and the immediate evolution of Galician public politics once its autonomy was set up, with the aim of understanding the current situation of our culture. At the same time, it exposes in detail the current concept of cultural industries and it reviews the strategies developed by this sector in our autonomous region as a mechanism to guarantee the cultural projects' viability and autonomy.

Online auctions are gaining popularity as they provide an excellent means of selling goods. Their advantages include: reducing transaction costs, selling goods that are difficult to sell through the ordinary market channels, and increasing the circle of potential customers. This paper presents a pattern language for the Web auction application domain. The pattern language has ten analysis patterns that offer solutions to support all the basic functionalities of this domain. Its development was based on several existing Internet auction systems and its application can guide the developer during analysis of such systems.

Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about the quantifiable consumer welfare accrued from such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of consumer surplus in eBay auctions. Our analysis, based on a sample of 5157 eBay auctions, indicates that the median surplus level per auction on eBay auctions is $3.53, which roughly translates to $1.47 billion in accrued consumer surplus for the year 2003 alone. We find that consumer surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.

Internet auctions are common in nearly all consumer categories. Hence, it is not surprising that a great deal of research has emerged on the topic in recent years. New design and format considerations and a wealth of available data from various platforms provide new questions and promising research opportunities for marketing researchers. This monograph begins with the introduction of the basic settings, concepts, and processes that are the building blocks of auction research. It then focuses on the transition from pre-Internet auction research to more recent topics. Special attention is given to research opportunities as well as to experimental methods that can provide both laboratory and field data to answer important questions. The survey reviews recent empirical and theoretical works on Internet auctions with a focus on Internet auction design, formats, and features that are currently debated in the marketing literature. Some of these issues are extensions of general auction topics, but the findings can be quite different in Internet environments. We touch on new design features that are particularly relevant to Internet auctions such as feedback ratings, buy-it-now options, and different closing rules. We also look at strategic and behavioral models that are shaping marketing research on Internet auctions. Particular emphasis is given to behaviors that are relevant in offline environments but take on new meanings and forms in Internet auction environments. 6 2.1 The Four Standard Auction Formats 7

Internet auctions demonstrate that advances in information technologies can create more efficient venues of exchange between large numbers of traders. However, the growth of Internet auctions has been accompanied by a corresponding growth in Internet auction fraud. Much extant research on 1 Carol Saunders was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Lucas Introna was the associate editor. Mike Chiasson and James Backhouse served as reviewers.

We examine seller strategies in 1177 Internet auctions on eBay, to understand the diversity of strategies used, and their impacts. Dimensions of strategic choice include the use of a 'Buy it Now' option, the level of the starting price, and the use of a secret reserve price. A major focus of our analysis is on differences across sellers with different volumes of sales. The largest volume sellers (termed "retailers") in our sample employ uniform selling strategies, but lower volume sellers exhibit a wide variety of strategic choices. While some components of sellers' strategies appear important in raising seller revenue, including starting the auction with a 'Buy it Now' offer, the overall impact of seller strategy choices on the outcome appears to be quite small.

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Interfaces with Other Disciplines Using bid data for the management of sequential, multi-unit, online auctions with uniformly distributed bidder valuations

In this paper we explore and analyze the structure of Internet auctions from an analytical and an empirical perspective. Such web-based auctions are rapidly emerging as a mercantile process of choice in the electronic marketplace. We observe current Internet auctions for one-time products, such as rapidly aging hardware, and analyze them within the framework of the existing auction theory. While traditional auction theory focuses on single-item auctions, we observe that a majority of on-line auctions are multi-item auctions. A significant contribution of this work is the theoretical derivation of the structure of the winning bids in multi-item progressive on-line auctions. Additionally, for comparative purposes, we explore the structural characteristics of alternative multi-item auction mechanisms proposed in the auction theory. We derive hypotheses based on our analytical results and compare two different types of auction mechanisms. We test the traditional auction theory assumption regarding the homogeneity of bidders and present the first ever empirically derived classification and performance-comparison of on-line bidders. We test our hypotheses using real-world empirical data obtained by tracking a premier web-based auction site. Statistical analysis of the data indicates that firms may gain by choosing alternative auction mechanisms. We also provide directions for further exploration of this emerging but important dimension of electronic commerce.

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Interfaces with Other Disciplines Using bid data for the management of sequential, multi-unit, online auctions with uniformly distributed bidder valuations

We have designed configurable agents to represent users in online auctions, specificMly the Michigan AuctionBot. The agents can be configured, started, and monitored from a web interface. We implemented three types of agents, distinguished by their different ways of using information in the auctions. A competitive agent does not use any information in the auction market. It chooses its actions based on its individual optimization problem. A price modeling agent uses price history as its only information. A bidder-modeling agent uses other agents' bidding histories to predict their next bids and infer the next clearing price. Our experiments suggest that an agent's performance in the auctions depends not only on its bidding strategy, but also on the bidding strategies of others. When all the agents behave strategically they may reach a sub-optimal equilibrium, in which they receive worse payoffs than behaving competitively. keywords: Web agents, internet auctions, online learning, strategic bidding

Millions of people participate in online auctions on websites such as eBay. The data available in these public markets offer interesting opportunities to study Internet auctions. We explore techniques for identifying common bidding patterns on eBay using data from eBay video game console auctions. The analysis reveals that there are certain bidding behaviors that appear frequently in the data, some of which have been previously identified and others which are new. We propose new attributes of bidding engagements and rules for classifying strategies. In addition, we suggest economic motivations that might lead to the identified behaviors.

This paper presents findings from an interpretive study concerning the social processes involved in the act of bidding on the internet auction site eBay.com. Interpretations of depth interviews provide insights to the dynamic social forum of internet auction sites and their dissimilarity from both traditional retail venues and online stores. Participants' stories suggest how competing and a desire to maintain community norms can create conflict in the form of a struggle for control. Following a grounded theory tradition, emergent themes are integrated with relevant research that involves behavioural, emotional and social structural components. This study contributes to our understanding of unique social psychological aspects of online consumer behaviour. We also discuss implications for marketers and researchers. He has published six book chapters, regularly presents at global conferences and regularly reviews manuscripts for at least a dozen journals. His expertise is in customer value management, consulting with numerous firms on brand/product management, account management, deep customer insight processes and supply chain innovation.

We provide theoretical and empirical analysis of a selling mechanism used by an Internet web-site that combines important features of auctions and gambling. This is the first analysis of such a selling mechanism, which provides insights into how the two kinds of behavior might be related in real life. The winner of the object is the bidder with the highest bid not submitted by any other bidder. In the equilibrium of our game theoretical model, each bid made with positive probability yields the same probability of winning. Bidders are more likely to submit higher bids, and the bid distribution does not depend on the value of the object or the highest bid allowed if one controls for the number of bidders. Most of these key theoretical predictions are confirmed by the data.

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Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about the quantifiable consumer welfare accrued from such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of consumer surplus in eBay auctions. Our analysis, based on a sample of 5187 eBay auctions, indicates that the median surplus level per auction on eBay auctions is $3.53, which roughly translates to $1.47 billion in accrued consumer surplus for the year 2003 alone. We find that consumer surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Interfaces with Other Disciplines Using bid data for the management of sequential, multi-unit, online auctions with uniformly distributed bidder valuations

Most research on Internet auction fraud focuses exclusively on the relationship between the con-artist and victim. However, the con-artist and victim are situated in an ecology comprising the auction house, police, and auction community. This paper employs the ‘parasite’ metaphor as a way of building theory about Internet auction fraud. We begin by describing the parasite metaphor. We then introduce

Internet auction companies have developed innovative tools that enable sellers to reveal more information about their credibility and product quality to avoid the "lemons" problem. On the basis of signaling and auction theories, the authors propose a typology of Internet auction quality and credibility indicators, adopt and modify model, and use eBay as an example to examine empirically how different types of indicators help alleviate uncertainty. This empirical evidence demonstrates how Internet auction features affect consumer participation and bidding decisions, what modifies the credibility of quality indicators, and how different buyers react to indicators. The signaling-based hypotheses provide coherent explanations of consumers' bidding behavior. As the first empirical study to evaluate the signaling role of comprehensive Internet auction institutional features in mitigating the adverse selection problem, this research provides evidence to clarify the economic foundation behind innovative Internet auction designs.

An important unanswered question in the area of Internet auctions is what dynamics influences consumer preferences for shopping on these online auctions. Two key aspects of studying what sells on the Internet auctions are (a) the characteristics of products to be ...

We conducted 80 auctions on eBay. Forty of these auctions were for various popular music CDs while the remaining 40 auctions were for video games for Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The revenue equivalence theorem states that any auction form having the same effective reserve price yields the same expected revenue. The effective reserve price on eBay consists of three components: the opening bid amount, the secret reserve amount, and the shipping and handling charge. We set no secret reserve price and varied the opening bid and the shipping and handling charge to keep the overall reserve level fixed. When the effective reserve was $4, auctions with a low opening bid and high shipping charges attracted more bidders, earlier bidding, and yielded higher revenue than those with a high opening bid and low shipping charges. The same results holds only for Xbox games under the $8 effective reserve. Unlike the other treatments, where the reserve represents less than 30% of the retail price of the item, for CDs, the $8 effective reserve represents over 50% of the retail price of the item. In this treatment, we find no systematic difference in the number of bidders attracted to the auction or revenues as a function of how the effective reserve is allocated between opening bid and shipping charges. We show that these results can be accounted for by boundedly rational bidding behavior.

This research explores how social cues presented in an online auction affect sniping behavior. Sniping is a strategy of placing a bid on an item in the very ending stages of an auction with a pre-determined ending time in an attempt to win the auction. Such a strategy conceals the intentions of the bidder until the last moments of the auction and minimizes the possibility of other opposing bidders submitting higher bids due to the short period of time left to respond. The research includes two field studies and a lab experiment indicating that sniping appears to be influenced by social factors, that is, when there are a greater number of bidders in the auction or the auction site provides social information about the bidders, the relative use of sniping increases. This research supports the perspective that bidders rely on others' bidding behavior and characteristics as an indication of the true value of the item on sale, and is one of the first studies in the literature which takes this perspective.

Article about transformation of methods of remote sales in the conditions of e-commerce. The author classifies and analyzes features of new methods of electronic sales in the virtual environment.
Статья о трансформации дистанционных продаж в условиях электронной коммерции. Автор классифицирует и анализирует особенности новых методов электронных продаж в виртуальной среде.

This paper analyzes seller choices and outcomes in approximately 700 recent Internet auctions on eBay. The ‘Buy it Now’ option that is available in these auctions allows the seller to supplement or replace the auction with a posted price offer. We use a structural model to control for the endogenous conduct of the auction (e.g., number of bids and bidders)

With internet commerce, a buyer cannot directly examine the product and so must rely upon the accuracy and reliability of the seller in deciding whether and how much to bid. In this setting, the seller's reputation can become an important factor in the bid. This paper examines the impact of the seller's reputation on the willingness of buyers to bid on items sold via internet auctions, using a 1999 mint condition U.S. $5 gold coin whose average price was $32.73. The empirical results show that the seller's reputation has a positive, statistically signi¢cant, but small impact on the price.

Auctions are proposed as a distributed negotiation mean, particularly useful in multiagent systems where self-interested agents compete for resources. The Internet is the most known example of environment where agents belonging to different applications exploit the available resources and services. The aim of this paper is to show how auction mechanisms can be easily implemented by using programmable reactive tuple spaces. Tuple spaces are shared repositories of messages that follow the Linda model; the addition of programmable reactivity permits to adapt the behaviour of tuple space to the application-specific requirements. In the implementation of auctions, programmable reactivity is exploited to uncouple the auction mechanisms from selling and bidding policies of the participant agents.

This paper presents a method for designing bundles in a combinatorial auction protocol that is robust against false-name bids. Internet auctions have become an integral part of Electronic Commerce and a promising field for applying AI technologies. However, the possibility of a new type of cheating called a false-name bid, i.e., a bid submitted under a fictitious name, has been pointed out. A protocol called Leveled Division Set (LDS) protocol that is robust against false-name bids has been developed. However, this protocol requires the auctioneer to define a leveled division set. A leveled division set is a series of division sets, where a division set is a set of divisions and a division is a combination of bundles of goods. We need to solve a very complicated optimization problem to construct a leveled division set in order to obtain a good social surplus. We have developed a heuristic method for overcoming this problem. In this method, we first find a good division with a winner determination algorithm, and then construct a leveled division set by using this division as a seed. Through a simulation, we show that our method can obtain a social surplus that is very close to optimal.

This research establishes a dynamic game-theoretic model that interprets the mechanism of reputation feedback systems in online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auction markets. Based on the model, a numerical study is conducted to reveal the effects of feedback systems on auction markets. The study shows that the existence of feedback systems greatly improves the performance of online C2C auction markets: buyers are more willing to trade and gain more benefit from the transactions; sellers' honest behavior is encouraged, as honest sellers' gains are increased and dishonest sellers' gains are reduced. It also offers practical insights on the design of a feedback system: rewarding an honestly-behaving seller is less effective on promoting market performance than punishing a cheating seller.

Many firms divide the price a consumer pays for a good into two pieces---the price for the item itself and the price for shipping and handling. With fully rational customers, the exact division between the two prices is irrelevant---only the total price matters. We test this hypothesis by selling matched pairs of CDs and Xbox games in a series of field experiments on eBay. In theory, the ending auction price should vary inversely with the shipping charge to leave the total price paid constant. Contrary to the theory, we find that charging a high shipping cost and starting the auction at a low opening price leads to higher numbers of bidders and higher revenues when the shipping charge is not excessive. We show that these results can be accounted for by boundedly rational bidding behavior such as loss-aversion with separate mental accounts for different attributes of the price or disregard for shipping costs.

In this paper we explore and analyze the structure of Internet auctions from an analytical and an empirical perspective. Such web‐based auctions are rapidly emerging as a mercantile process of choice in the electronic marketplace. We observe current Internet ...

Despite growing interest in traditional and Internet auctions, the marketing literature on auctions is sparse. This paper outlines selected aspects of the research opportunity. We provide a brief description of the major auction mechanisms, outline key concepts and results from the economic analysis of auctions, and summarize the key findings in empirical tests of auction theory. We then identify areas for future research on auction markets, particularly those of interest to marketers in the new contexts created by the Internet.

Internet auction fraud has become prevalent. Methodologies for detecting fraudulent transactions use historical information about Internet auction participants to decide whether or not a user is a potential fraudster. The information includes reputation scores, values of items, time frames of various activities and transaction records. This paper presents a distinctive set of fraudster characteristics based on an analysis of 278 allegations about the sale of counterfeit goods at Internet auction sites. Also, it applies a Bayesian approach to analyze the relevance of evidence in Internet auction fraud cases.

In this paper we explore and analyze the structure of Internet auctions from an analytical and an empirical perspective. Such web-based auctions are rapidly emerging as a mercantile process of choice in the electronic marketplace. We observe current Internet auctions for one-time products, such as rapidly aging hardware, and analyze them within the framework of the existing auction theory. While

Structural econometric auction models with explicit game-theoretic modeling of bidding strategies have been quite a challenge from a methodological perspective, especially within the common value framework. We develop a Bayesian analysis of the hierarchical Gaussian common value model with stochastic entry introduced by Bajari and Hortaçsu. A key component of our approach is an accurate and easily interpretable analytical approximation of the equilibrium bid function, resulting in a fast and numerically stable evaluation of the likelihood function. We extend the analysis to situations with positive valuations using a hierarchical gamma model. We use a Bayesian variable selection algorithm that simultaneously samples the posterior distribution of the model parameters and does inference on the choice of covariates. The methodology is applied to simulated data and to a newly collected dataset from eBay with bids and covariates from 1000 coin auctions. We demonstrate that the Bayesian algorithm is very efficient and that the approximation error in the bid function has virtually no effect on the model inference. Both models fit the data well, but the Gaussian model outperforms the gamma model in an out-of-sample forecasting evaluation of auction prices. This article has supplementary material online.

Despite growing interest in traditional and Internet auctions, the marketing literature on auctions is sparse. This paper outlines selected aspects of the research opportunity. We provide a brief description of the major auction mechanisms, outline key concepts and results from the economic analysis of auctions, and summarize the key findings in empirical tests of auction theory. We then identify areas for future research on auction markets, particularly those of interest to marketers in the new contexts created by the Internet.

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/copyright Author's personal copy Interfaces with Other Disciplines Using bid data for the management of sequential, multi-unit, online auctions with uniformly distributed bidder valuations