Founded in April 1997 by Creative Computers, uBid is an online auction site which primarily sells computers and electronics that are either refurbished or about to be discontinued (Bazeley, 2004). Unlike eBay, uBid deals specifically in business-to-consumer deals. The site has a hybrid retail-auction approach that places it somewhere between Amazon.com and eBay (Bazeley, 2004). In most cases, uBid owns the items that are up for auction on its site, buying excess inventory from manufacturers and other parties (Kaiser, 2003). In 2001, uBid stated that its $9 starting bid was a uBid trademark, and an enticement for consumers (Tillett, 2001). By 2004, that starting bid had lowered to $1 in most cases.
As a part of Petters Group Worldwide, uBid’s major market is computers and other consumer electronics, but the site offers other items such as sporting equipment, games, and apparel (http://www.ubid.com/about/). The site offers products such as home audio systems, DVD players, digital cameras and collectibles, making it a popular destination for the buying of quality brandname products. All products come with warranties, ensuring the maintenance of the high-quality reputation uBid currently enjoys, being the third most popular auctioning site visited inside the U.S. market (Bazeley, 2004).
uBid was first floated on the public stock market in December 1998 (Kaiser, 2003), and at one stage was a high-flying dot-com whose stock traded near $100 (Bazeley, 2004). In an effort to compete with eBay, uBid stepped onto the consumer-to-consumer action path in late 2000. To attract customers away from other competitors, uBid let potential sellers post items on the site without a listing fee. The company claimed that it would make money by taking a percentage of the final selling price. Unfortunately for uBid, many of the posted items had opening bid prices that were too high to make them attractive to bidders. The company was also forced to deal with fraud, fighting desperately to ward off people who posted items without any intention of sending them to the highest bidder. uBid eventually grew tired of policing consumer-to-consumer auctions, and pulled the plug almost a year later (Kaiser, 2003).
The company claims that its statistics, including over one billion dollars in merchandise sold, and a registry of over four and a half million customers, are a testimony to its market expertise (http://www.ubid.com/about/). Certainly one of the reasons behind uBid’s popularity and success is that it is firmly established as the leader of the business-to-consumer online auction sites. The company has established strong relationships with major manufacturers such as Sony, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba (Tillett, 2001). In 2001, uBid signed a deal with Hewlett-Packard in regards to the sale of the company’s products. In some cases, Hewlett-Packard chose to launch its products on the uBid site before these products were released on retail shelves (Seideman, 2001).
Joining uBid is relatively simple. All that is required is a credit card number and some personal details. All transactions are monitored, ensuring the safety of all deals. The sit is user-friendly, offering free tutorials to those new to the online auctioning experience.
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Lauren Spackman 13:47, 12 Oct 2005 (EST)
Angela Klein 21:04, 27 Oct 2004 (EST)
