An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different types. The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory.
eBay Inc. is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. Sales occur either via online auctions or "buy it now" instant sales, and the company charges commissions to sellers upon sales. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in September 1995. It has 132 million yearly active buyers worldwide and handled $73 billion in transactions in 2023, 48% of which was in the United States. In 2023, the company had a take rate of 13.81%.
PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers; it serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and many other commercial users, for which it charges a fee.
An online auction is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices. Similar to in-person auctions, online auctions come in a variety of types, with different bidding and selling rules.
Huuto.net is a Finnish online auctioning website. It was established in 1999 and has been owned by ePrice Oy since 2019.
Half.com was a fixed-price online marketplace for books, textbooks, music, movies, video games, and video game consoles. It was acquired by eBay in 2000 and shut down in 2017, with the domain redirected to the eBay website.
Hi-Living is a Korean online auction website and shopping mall where people from all around the world buy and sell goods and services.
Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company with an emphasis on the selling of handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor, religious items and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft supplies and tools. Items described as vintage must be at least 20 years old. The site follows in the tradition of open craft fairs, giving sellers personal storefronts where they list their goods for a fee of US$0.20 per item. Beginning in 2013, Etsy allowed sellers to sell mass-manufactured items.
Quicksales was an online auction site based in Australia, and the second largest auction website in Australia. At one point there were more than 1.8 million items available for auction or purchase and over 515,000 member accounts. The site was defunct as of 2018.
Bob Shop, formerly Bidorbuy or bidorbuy.co.za, is a South African e-commerce website based on an internet auction and online marketplace. Transactions on Bidorbuy are in South African Rand.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
Auto auctions are a method of selling vehicles based on an auction system. Auto auctions can be found in most countries and are usually exclusive to licensed automobile dealers. In a few countries, such as Japan, auto auctions are well known and used by most residents.
Bidtopia was an e-commerce site originally launched in 2007 as a private auction site for Warehouse86 Ventures, LLC. Paul St. James, an owner of Bargainland, which had been the largest PowerSeller on eBay that same year, started the new enterprise in response to changes in eBay policies regarding high volume sales of brand name merchandise and restrictions on sellers with poor customer feedback. Bidtopia suffered the loss of one of its three distribution centers in 2008, and went offline and possibly out of business in early 2010.
iOffer was a San Francisco-based online trading community that was launched on May 1, 2002 by Steven Nerayoff. As of February 2008, it claimed to have nearly one million total users, including approximately 75,000 sellers, although this information cannot be independently verified, nor is it known how many of these users are active.
Customer to customer markets provide a way to allow customers to interact with each other. Traditional markets require business to customer relationships, in which a customer goes to the business in order to purchase a product or service. In customer to customer markets, the business facilitates an environment where customers can sell goods or services to each other. Other types of markets include business to business (B2B) and business to customer (B2C).
Pricefalls Marketplace was an online marketplace. In 2019, it was acquired by Loblaw Companies.
Yardsellr was a San Francisco-based person-to-person online marketplace founded by former eBay executives in October 2009. It was shut down on February 4, 2013 to concentrate more on e-commerce at the short-lived social commerce site CompoundM.
There are many types of e-commerce models, based on market segmentation, that can be used to conducted business online. The 6 types of business models that can be used in e-commerce include: Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), Business-to-Business (B2B), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), Business-to-Administration (B2A), and Consumer-to-Administration
Carousell is a Singaporean smartphone and web-based consumer to consumer and business to consumer marketplace buying and selling new and secondhand goods. Headquartered in Singapore, it also operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Carousell is available on both iOS and Android devices.
Swappa functions as a peer-to-peer marketplace, facilitating the buying and selling of both new and gently used technology products. The platform establishes a direct connection between buyers and sellers, emphasizing that all listed devices must be fully operational to be eligible for sale. To uphold this standard, Swappa has a dedicated customer service team responsible for reviewing listed devices.
