

How eBay can save itself in 1 day - Modernnomad84
http://www.bradleyspencer.com/2009/how-ebay-can-save-itself-in-1-day/

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snewe
How about you bid your "reservation price" and have no regrets? Simply bid the
most you are willing to pay and then last minute bidders won't matter. That is
the beauty of a second price auction.

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scm007
That's one way, but it doesn't approximate real world "bidding".

I definitely think eBay would be better off with this feature implemented

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snewe
Ebay does this bidding for you. Anytime you enter an auction, the price you
are willing to pay should be independent of how everyone else in the room
values the object. If your willingness to pay is a function of the last bid,
then you probably should stick to fixed price sales.

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Modernnomad84
I don't disagree. The best approach is to always put your maximum bid in. But
human nature plays a big part in auctions, and I think ebay should note this.

It seems that most people, given 3 hours to think about and consider the
regret they would feel if they didn't get what they are bidding on, would
usually convince themselves to skip a coffee and add another five dollars to
their bid.

you are totally right, but humans are far from rational.

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Tichy
I seem to remember that they used to have that feature (or was it some other
auction site)?

While I hate the issue, too, there might be disadvantages for the buyer, too.
For example if the auction gets extended for 3 hours with each bid, it might
mean that you have to sit around forever monitoring the auction if you really
want the item.

A better fix might be to allow sniping (automatic bidding in the last second).

The reason for last second bidding is to avoid the pitfalls of human
psychology, I think. If you start earlier and outbid other people, they might
get into a bidding frenzy and prices will be driven higher than what makes
sense.

I suppose ebay outlaws sniping because they actually want that effect: the
higher the bid, the more money ebay gets. Personally I would prefer to decide
on one price and stick to it, so sniping would be perfect for me.

All in all I suspect that ebay tested the "prolong the auction" feature and
found that not prolonging it somehow works better - or at least it used to
work better.

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tesseract
> A better fix might be to allow sniping (automatic bidding in the last
> second).

In a sense they have that already, since eBay is a (quasi) second-price
auction.

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Tichy
What do you mean?

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tb
A true second-price auction is one where the bidders (secretly) inform the
auctioneer of the maximum price they'd be willing to pay, and the bidder who
nominates the highest price wins, but pays the price nominated by the second-
highest bidder. This is done in an attempt to eliminate the "winner's curse"
and encourage the bidders to nominate their true maximum price. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner%27s_curse>

eBay's proxy bidding system approximates a second-price auction because if
everyone enters their true maximum, the person who nominates the highest value
will pay (2nd-price + minimum-bid-increment).

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waldrews
There are serious economists who look at these issues. The book Snipers,
Shills, and Sharks, <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8435.html> is a great
summary of the research that includes this approach among a hundred others.

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shalmanese
eBay has heard this proposal at least a bajillion times before, including at
least 3 for me. I don't know what their reason is for not doing it that way
but it's been heavily considered and rejected.

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diN0bot
> "I don't know what their reason is"

I want to know.

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lacker
My guess is, they have tried it and it does not work. People don't want to
wait around 3 hours to see if they successfully bought something, they want to
get confirmation asap.

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sireat
I know auction sites which set a smaller increment (5-10mins). I do wonder,
why eBay hasn't tried it. 3 hours does seem too long.

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marcusestes
This would make eBay more complicated. I suspect that eBay will be slowly
overtaken by _less_ complicated rivals.

And dude, just bid your max price and then calmly await the verdict. I sure as
hell don't want to have to watch nervously over a continuously extending date
of purchase.

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DanielStraight
Ebay still has auctions? I thought it all went Buy It Now years ago.

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utunga
New Zealand's eBay clone - trademe.co.nz - has auto-extend for auctions where
a bid was just received.. The auto-extend is only 5 minutes though.

This doesn't eliminate last minute bidders though - rather it just extends the
period of the 'last minute bidding war' till someone gives up.

So. Its good idea, but you don't want a 3 hour auto-extend - 3 minutes would
be better. 3 hours, as suggested, would probably mean many auctions would not
end for weeks and weeks and would likely frustrate the heck out of bidders and
sellers alike.

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Modernnomad84
Shit. Thats cool. Ok, five minutes is more than fine.

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growt
Another fix would be if the exact ending time would not be published. Just
something like "This auctions ends in the next 20 minutes".

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Modernnomad84
eBay just holds it's "ending time" as some sort of holy grail. I really have
no idea why.

Even if this was just a feature that sellers could opt for (for five bucks
more or so), I think it would make a world of difference.

