E-Commerce: The Second Wave Fifth Annual Edition

1
E-Commerce The Second WaveFifth Annual Edition

• Chapter 6
• Online Auctions, Virtual Communities, and Web
  Portals

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Origins of Auctions

• In an auction
• Seller offers an item for sale, but does not
  establish price
• Bidders
• Potential buyers
• Bids
• Prices bidders are willing to pay for an item

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English Auctions (e.g. eBay)

• Bidders publicly announce their successive higher
  bids until no higher bid is forthcoming
• Open auction (vs. private auction)
• Bids are publicly announced
• Minimum bid
• The price at which an auction begins
• Reserve price
• Minimum acceptable price (not announced on eBay
  until bids exceed it)

4
English Auctions (Continued)

• Yankee auctions
• English auctions that offer multiple units of an
  item for sale
• Called Dutch on eBay
• Disadvantages
• Winning bidders tend not to bid their full
  private valuations
• Bidders risk becoming caught up in the excitement
  of competitive bidding

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Dutch Auctions

• Also called descending-price auctions
• Form of open auction in which bidding starts at a
  high price and drops until bidder accepts price
• Often better for the seller
• Good for moving large numbers of commodity items
  quickly
• Not same as Dutch on eBay

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Online Auctions and Related Businesses

• Three categories of auction Web sites
• General consumer auctions
• Specialty consumer auctions
• Business-to-business auctions
• Largest number of transactions
• Occurs on general consumer auction sites

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General Consumer Auctions

• Most common format used on eBay
• Computerized version of the English auction
• eBay English auction
• Allows seller to set a reserve price
• Bidders are listed (unless Private)
• Bid amounts are not disclosed until after auction
  
• Allows sellers to specify that an auction be made
  private

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Specialty Consumer Auctions

• Specialized Web auction sites
• Meet the need of special interest market segments
• Specialty consumer auction sites
• Golf Club Exchange, Cigarbid.com, and Winebid
• Gain an advantage by identifying a strong market
  segment with readily identifiable products

9
Consumer Reverse Auctions and Group Purchasing
Sites

• Reverse bid
• Buyer can accept lowest offer or the offer that
  best matches buyers criteria
• Priceline.com
• Completes many of its transactions from an
  inventory
• Operates more as a liquidation broker

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Consumer Reverse Auctions and Group Purchasing
Sites (Continued)

• Group purchasing site
• Seller posts an item with a price
• As individual buyers enter bids, site can
  negotiate better price with the items provider
• Posted price ultimately decreases as number of
  bids increases

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Business-to-Business Auctions

• Liquidation brokers
• Firms that find buyers for unusable inventory
  items
• Online auctions
• Logical extension of inventory liquidation
  activities to a new and more efficient channel,
  the Internet

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Business-to-Business Auctions (Continued)

• Ingram Micro
• Major distributor of computers and related
  equipment to value-added resellers
• Often finds itself with outdated items turned
  over to liquidation brokers
• Now auctions those items to its established
  customers
• Auction prices received average about 60 percent
  of the items costs

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Auction-Related Services

• Auction escrow services
• An independent party that
• Holds buyers payment until buyer receives
  purchased item and is satisfied with it
• Auction directory and information services
• Offer guidance for new auction participants
• Offer helpful hints and tips for more experienced
  buyers and sellers along with directories of
  online auction sites

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Auction-Related Services (Continued)

• Auction software
• For sellers
• Software offer services that can help with or
  automate tasks such as image hosting
• For buyers
• Software observes auction progress and places a
  bid high enough to win the auction

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Auction-Related Services (Continued)

• Auction consignment services
• Create online auction for an item
• Handle the transaction
• Remit balance of proceeds

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Virtual Communities and Web Portals

• Cellular-satellite communications technology
• Can be packaged with
• Notebook computers
• Personal digital assistants (PDAs)
• Mobile phones
• Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
• Allows Web pages formatted in HTML to be
  displayed on devices with small screens

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Electronic Marketplaces

• Marketplaces
• Can serve people who want to buy and sell a wide
  range of products and services
• AvantGo
• Provide PDAs with downloads of Web site contents,
  news, restaurant reviews, and maps

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Intelligent Software Agents

• Programs that search the Web and find items for
  sale that meet a buyers specifications
• Some software agents
• Focused on a particular category of product
• mySimon
• One of the best shopping agents currently
  available

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Virtual Communities

• Gathering place for people and businesses that
  does not have physical existence
• Exist on the Internet in various forms
• Usenet newsgroups
• Chat rooms
• Web sites
• Offer people a way to connect with each other and
  discuss common issues and interests

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Virtual Communities (Continued)

• Virtual learning community
• One form of virtual community
• Can help companies, their customers, and their
  suppliers plan, collaborate, and transact
  business
• Google Answers
• Gives people a place to ask questions then
  answered by an expert for a fee

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Web Community Consolidation

• Virtual communities for consumers
• Can succeed as money-making propositions if
• They offer something sufficiently valuable to
  justify a charge for membership
• Web portal revenue models
• Strategies that build on a combination of virtual
  communities and other activities

22
Web Portal Revenue Models

• Advertising supported web portals
• One rough measure of stickiness
• How long each user spends at the site
• Nielsen//NetRatings
• Determines site popularity by measuring the
  number of unique visitors

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Web Portal Revenue Models (Continued)

• Web portals
• High visitor counts can yield high advertising
  rates
• Companies that run Web portals
• Believe in the power of portals
• Add sticky features such as chat rooms, e-mail,
  and calendar functions

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Internal Web Portals

• Run on intranets
• Can save significant amounts of money by
• Replacing the printing and distribution of paper
  memos, newsletters, and other correspondence
• Can become a good way of creating virtual
  community among employees