Factors Influencing Consumer Bidding Behavior in Online Auction (Consumer-to-Consumer)

According to the critical analysis of theoretical and empirical literature, there is a need to better understand and to examine the relationship between consumer bidding behavior in online auctions and the related influencing factors. Online auction is a relatively new field of study. It is important to further research the area of online auctions. The theoretical structure, research questions, research hypotheses, and the hypothesized research model are introduced. Theory of Reasoned Auction, Theory of Planned Behavior, and Technology Acceptance Model are used as theoretical foundations of this study. This study focuses on the relationship between consumer bidding behaviors in online auctions, and factors influencing those behaviors. The research is focused on the following influencing factors: customer satisfaction, ease of use of the web site, and demographic profile. A non-experimental, quantitative, correlational research design was conducted to study the relationship between influencing factors and consumer bidding behavior. The target population was people with online shopping experience with eBay who have current access to the Internet. After IRB approval, the researcher collected the date by a paper and pen questionnaire at a public beach in Boca Raton. The questionnaire was handed out to the eligible participants. The questionnaires were dropped in a closed box. The data for this study collected from at least 146 eligible participants using pen and paper questionnaire as an instrument. Findings helped to serve the online consumers and the vendors, as well as being a scholarly contribution to the study of online bidding. This study used SPSS software to analyze the collected data. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha, Pearson r correlation, simple regression, and multiple regressions, were applied in this study. The study findings indicated that an individual\u27s bidding behavior is influenced positively by factors like consumer satisfaction and ease of use and bidding behavior is not influenced by demographic characteristics

Auction-Based Pricing Model for Web Service Providers

Applying auctions to Web services selection and invocation calls for examination due to the unique features of Web services, such as interoperable machine-to-machine interactions and reenterable bargaining services. In this paper we propose a formal model for Web services-based auctions. Examining one-sided sealed auction type, we prove mathematically that service requestors’ risk preferences could lead to different pricing strategies for service providers towards higher profit. We argue that Service Level Agreement (SLA) documents can be used to analyze service requestors’ preferences. On top of WS-Agreement, we propose a basic service requestor risk preference elicitation algorithm, as well as a historical data-based service requestor risk preference prediction model. Guidelines are provided to iteratively approach the learning rate of the proposed risk preference prediction model. The methods and techniques presented in this paper can be reused to investigate and examine more facades of services-oriented auctions, towards establishing a new research realm on comprehensive services-oriented auctions