Prices paid for goods in 473 online auctions were routinely 25% lower than those paid for identical goods purchased through catalog sites, according to a new study from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration.
The study, “Can Online Auctions Beat Online Catalogs?,” compared price differences between goods won at www.surplusauction.om and ww.onesale.com with analogous goods from www.egghead.com, www.pricescan.com, and other sites.
The study’s authors, Abraham Seidmann, Xerox Professor of Computers and Information Systems and Operation Management and Yaniv Vakrat, a PhD student, are both of the Simon school.
The two have collaborated on another paper studying online auctions: “Implications of the Bidders’ Arrival Process on the Design of Online Auctions.” Findings from that study include the fact that 70% of bidders sign on during the first half of a product auction; that higher minimum bids tend to result in fewer bidders; and that offering more units results in an increased number of bidders.
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