The Online Business Center

Posts Tagged ‘Auctions on www.ebay.de’

In order to become active at www.ebay.de, one first has to accomplish a registration process, which includes provision of personal information such as name, address and an email account. Further, a nickname has to be chosen. This nickname is a person’s identity at eBay. This means that other eBay users do not see a person’s true identity, but only his nickname. For email accounts that do not demand an identification of the holder, eBay itself arranges an identification process. In this way, eBay tries to prevent users from providing fake personal information. Moreover, the identification process narrows a person’s ability to restart with a clean record, after having received negative feedback. Nevertheless, it does not eliminate this possibility, as a user could e.g. restart under the name of some relative that is inactive at eBay.

As a registered user, one can place items for sale or bid on items. In order to sell an item, one has to create an offer page. It is mandatory in this context to specify an offer name, an offer description, a starting price, the auction’s duration, the accepted payment method and the country, from which bids are accepted. Further, the offer can be voluntarily enriched by providing a picture of the product or a specification of a mode of dispatch together with the entailed costs.2 For eBay auctions, it is usually the case that the buyer bears the shipping costs, while the seller bears the fees for using the eBay marketplace.

Subsequent to a transaction, both buyer and seller can give a feedback about their respective trade partner. A feedback consists of a general evaluation, which may eitherbe positive, neutral or negative, and an additional comment. On a seller’s offer page, there is a link to all feedbacks the seller has received. Moreover, eBay provides two numbers summarizing the seller’s overall feedback. The first number is the difference between positive and negative feedback, both from unique users. The second number is the percentage of positive ratings, which is even presented in bold characters. When examining an offer, these two numbers are hard to overlook so that each bidder should at least have a rough impression of the seller’s reliability. Therefore, a dubious reputation can be characterized by a considerable percentage of negative ratings.

Neutral and negative feedback is rare on eBay. It is common practice to provide positive feedback, unless a heavy breach of trust has occurred. This means that negative feedback is mainly provided, if one party fails to deliver, i.e., if either the buyer refuses to pay or the seller, upon receipt of payment, does not deliver the item. A negative rating should thus work as a strong stigma.

Finally, on eBay products are auctioned off via second-price auctions. That is, the highest bidder receives the good and pays a price slightly (i.e., € 0.50 ≈ US-$ 0.60) above the second highest bid. Therefore, a second-price auction builds the basis of the theoretical model following in the next section.