Overview of Electronic Auctions

Online auctions are one of the most popular and effective ways of trading goods over the Internet (Bapna, Goes, & Gupta, 2001). Thousands of items are sold on online auctions everyday including books, toys, computers, antiques, and even services. As an example, eBay (http://www.ebay. com), the largest online auction house, has more than 241 million registered users today, and in the year 2006 alone, eBay recorded consolidated net revenue of $6 billion (eBay, 2007). On any given day, there are more than 78 million items listed on eBay, and approximately 6 million listings are added per day. It has also spread its wings to other countries outside the USA, and to date it is present in 24 countries. In addition to eBay, there are more than 2,600 auction houses that conduct online auctions (common sites include Amazon. com, http://www.amazon.com; Yahoo! Auctions, http://auctions. shopping.yahoo.com; priceline.com, http://www.priceline. com; and uBid, http://www.ubid.com). These auction houses conduct many different types of auctions according to a variety of rules and protocols.