Online auction is a business model in which items are sold through bidding conducted over the internet rather than in person, spanning both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets, with automated systems tracking bids and enforcing the auction's rules. Online auctions date back as far as 1979 on services such as CompuServe, and dedicated auction websites began in 1995 with Onsale.com, founded by Jerry Kaplan, which itself acted as the seller of the goods. Later that year Pierre Omidyar founded eBay on a different approach, letting individual sellers auction directly to individual buyers rather than selling its own inventory, and this peer-to-peer model proved far more popular, making eBay the largest consumer-to-consumer online auction site and a dominant force in early online retail.
Facts
Core MechanismAn online auction runs an auction over the internet rather than in person, most commonly as either a business-to-consumer format where a company itself acts as seller, or a consumer-to-consumer format that instead facilitates person-to-person sales between the site's own users, with automated bidding, minimum bids and fixed closing times replacing an in-room auctioneer. 1 Origin YearOnsale.com (May 1995, seller-as-vendor format) is documented as the first dedicated online auction website; eBay followed in September 1995 with a person-to-person format. Informal auction-style postings existed earlier on services such as CompuServe from 1979. Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Online auctions, where buyers bid competitively on listed items over the internet, are a foundational e-commerce industry format.
Sources
1. Wikipedia, Online Auction
WikipediaWikipedia: Online auction, lead paragraphQuote, Wikipedia: Online auction, lead paragraph
An online auction (also electronic auction, e-auction, virtual auction, or eAuction) is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices.
1. Wikipedia, Online Auction
WikipediaWikipedia: Online auction, history of dedicated sitesQuote, Wikipedia: Online auction, history of dedicated sites
The first online auction site was Onsale.com, founded by Jerry Kaplan in May 1995.
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