Online Auctioning is Dying Out on EBay
This article focuses on the reasons behind the decline of the online auctions. According to a statistical analysis from Stanford University, most of EBay’s products are not sold through auctions anymore, although most people still associate the company as the biggest auctioning website. The article then goes on and talks about why there’s such a big decrease in the auction business. The article points out that more sellers online would prefer to set their products at a fixed price, and more buyers would prefer to spend less time on comparing prices, bidding, etc. Internet users would spend more time on entertainment and social media like youtube.com and facebook .com instead of biddings and rechecking the website for the sale to end. Not only do people get distracted by other websites, they also think online auctioning is a waste of their time. Another reason for such decrease is that internet itself has made it easier for people to find the cheapest option for one item, thus defeats the purpose of auctions.
While the decline is inevitable, there are some benefits to it. It’s easier for buyers to find a better deal because of the lack of competition. More people are getting better deals off the auctions.
In the comment section of this article, a lot of EBay sellers claim that this article is biased by focusing the reason on EBay users rather than the company itself. According to the comments, EBay is trying to limit their focus on auctions because it is out-dated. By re-enforcing its buyers’ agreement, EBay is making it difficult for individual sellers to put their products on auction. In recent years, the company has been focusing mainly on ticket-selling, money-transfer, and selling products at a fixed-priced (like Amazon). EBay makes a lot more money on their Paypal than auctions. Maybe the company itself is the main reason for the decline of online auctions.
Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-26/an-auction-most-ebay-users-dont-have-time-for-that