When exploring the evolution of online auctioning, it is important to begin with Ebay, currently the largest online auctioning site in the world. Ebay was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar when his wife wanted a place where she could buy sell and trade Pez dispensers. It was primarily built within the intention of bringing together an online community rather than as a place where people could make profit. What began as a place where people could trade collectable items morphed into a multi million dollar global empire.
In the late nineteen- nineties, many large businesses, particularly in America, began to include online auctions as a branch of their website. They did this as an alternative to having in store sales, a way to get rid of unwanted and excess stock. They found this was a better way to make more profit, as consumers often paid more for these goods than they would have been priced at had they been in an instore sale.
Since Ebay's humble beginning in the mid nineteen nineties, hundreds of other online auctioning sites have emerged. Many search engines (such as Yahoo [1]) have their own online auctions and large stores such as Amazon.com [2] also have online auctioning pages. Ebay itself has become so popular that they have been included in high-rating programmes such as Big Brother, where the audience must decided which item from ebay would be the most appropriate gift for evicted housemates. Many items from popular television shows such as Oprah [3] are also placed on Ebay to raise money for charity.
REFERENCES:
Gomes-Casseres,B. 2001. The History of EbayRetrieved from http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~magnus/ief248a/eBay/history.html (Accessed 25th October 2004)
Emily Fraser 09:29, 28 Oct 2004 (EST)
