2005 Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops (SAINT 2005 Workshops)
Online Auctions: Insights into the First Bidder Discount
Trento, Italy
January 31-February 04
ISBN: 0-7695-2263-7
Internet auctions like Amazon or eBay use an ascending bid auction as the basic auction format. This basic auction format can be augmented by various price features: the First Bidder Discount is one example. In a First Bidder Discount auction the bidder receives a discount on the price to pay if the bidder was the first to place a bid. The objective of this paper is to analyse this mechanism and to present a theoretical model describing the rules of a discount auction. Furthermore, an analysis of bidder behaviour and the timing of bids in internet auctions that include an added discount is investigated.