Analyses of an Internet Auction Market Focusing on the Fixed - Price Selling at a Buyout Price

Internet Auction is a one of the most successful e-Commerce markets. Recently, it has been reported that the trades having buyout options are increasing. A " buyout option " is available in many Internet auction sites. When a seller uses a buyout option, a " buyout price (buy price) " of the good is set by the seller. If a buyer submits a bid equal to the buyout price, the auction immediately ends and the buyer can obtain the good by paying the buyout price. If the seller sets the start price to the price equal to the buyout price, it can be viewed as fixed-price selling. In the recent auction sites, identical goods are sold in an auction with a buyout price and in an auction without a buyout price simultaneously. Considering such a situation, understanding how a buyout option affects the market is significant to design the future auction markets. However, there are following two problems. Understanding sellers' behaviors in an Internet auction market As a first step to understand the effect of a buyout option, we must know the real situation in an Internet auction market. In particular, understanding sellers' behaviors in auctions with a buyout option is required. Therefore, we need to understand seller's behaviors in the actual market. Building a model based on the situation in actual markets Previous studies have mainly focused on clarifying the conditions which selling format outperforms. In the actual Internet auction market, the both types of sellers using the buyout option and not using the buyout option simultaneously exist. However, researchers have paid little attention to the interaction between the two selling formats. Therefore, building a model to explain the situation in the actual market is required. In this research, in order to solve the above problems, the author has characterized the major seller's behavior by analyzing the actual auction data and proposed a model including two sellers and three buyers. ii For the first problem, the author analyzes the actual data in an Internet auction market. In particular, the seller's behavior is analyzed by focusing the start prices and buyout prices which sellers set. For the second problem, the author proposes a model of an auction market with a buyout option where two sellers exist considering the result of data analysis. First, the case where sellers' strategies are limited to the major strategies obtained from the actual data is …