eBay And Auctions
When eBay began its business, the only payment option is auction. I still remembered my cousin bragging about getting a vintage skateboard after a series of intense bidding. Online auction used to be a popular form of entertainment for people. But after Youtube and Facebook took over the internet, people didn’t need the auction games anymore. Moreover, people are getting used to buying goods online. They get their daily necessities through internet instead of buying unique or rare things which were used to only be sold on eBay. Thus, they don’t want to wait for 7 days for an auction to close. Amazon which provides Prime 2-day shipping is a great alternatives. People can get the products they desired as soon as possible. Also, the auction only runs 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. So, it’s not long enough for a indexing on Google to take place because things start to show up on Google after around 30 days. A lot of potential consumers might not be able to participate in auctions. Furthermore, it’s really hard to manage a product when it was unsold. Sellers need to decide whether to re-list it or just discard it, which is a relatively time-consuming process. Thus, more and more fixed-priced listing occur. In fact, only 15% of the listings on eBay use auction now.
Even though, less and less auctions occur on eBay. It’s still interesting to discuss it’s biding system. It actually uses second-price sealed-bid auction. For example, Buyer A sets his bidding price for a glass bottle at $15 and buyer B sets her price at $9.75. Since, buyer A gives a higher price eBay will bid on his behalf one increment higher than other buyer’s price until it reaches $15. Meanwhile, other buyers could increase their bidding prices. The winner pays one increment more than the second-highest price. It’s a really interesting game but buyers sometimes get frustrated of not getting the goods they want. Auction still works when sellers are selling products that are unique or lower than the normal market prices. But for now, most of the eBay sellers change their strategy to fixed-price selling in order to fit in the new internet cultures.
Source: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/ebay-auctions_n_3346307.html