eCommerce Chptr 6

Yankee auctions

English auctions that offer multiple units of an item for sale and allow bidders to specify the quantity they want to buy.

Texting

Using SMS.

Online community

a gathering place for people and businesses that does not have a physical existence.

Web community

a gathering place for people and businesses that does not have a physical existence.

Virtual community

a gathering place for people and businesses that does not have a physical existence. Also called a Web community or an online community.

Reserve

a minimum acceptable price established by sellers.

Reserve price

a minimum acceptable price established by sellers.

Open auction

an auction where bidders publicly announce their successive higher bids until no higher bid is forthcoming. Also called an English auction, ascending-price auction or open-outcry auction.

Open-outcry auction

an auction where bidders publicly announce their successive higher bids until no higher bid is forthcoming. Also called an English auction, ascending-price auction or open-outcry auction.

Ascending-price auction

an auction where bidders publicly announce their successive higher bids until no higher bid is forthcoming. Also called an English auction, open auction or open-outcry auction.

English auction

an auction where bidders publicly announce their successive higher bids until no higher bid is forthcoming. Also called an ascending-price auction, open auction or open-outcry auction.

Escrow service

an independent party that holds a buyer's payment until the buyer receives the purchased item and is satisfied that the item is what the seller represented it to be.

Apps

application software that can run on mobile phones.

Open-outcry double auction

auction conducted by the Chicago Board Options Exchange where buy and sell offers are shouted by traders standing in a small area on the exchange floor called a trading pit.

First-price sealed-bid auction

auction where bidders submit their bids independently and are usually prohibited from sharing information with each other. The highest bidder wins. If multiple items are auctioned, successive lower (next highest) bidders are awarded the remaining items at the prices they bid.

Sealed-bid auctions

bidders submit their bids independently and are usually prohibited from sharing information with each other.

Double auction

buyers and sellers each submit combined price-quantity bids to an auctioneer. The auctioneer matches the sellers' offers (starting with the lowest price and then going up) to the buyers' offers (starting with the highest price and then going down) until all the quantities offered for sale are sold to buyers.

Bulletin board systems (BBSs)

computers that allowed users to connect using dial-up connections through telephone lines to read and post messages in a common discussion forum that resembled an electronic version of a physical bulletin board.

Mobile commerce (m-commerce)

confluence of technologies made doing business online using mobile devices.

Location aware services

customized advertising or other services transmitted by Web sites to mobile devices based on the mobile devices transmitted location.

Virtual learning network

distance learning platforms such as Blackboard for student-instructor interaction.

Consumer-to-business

electronic commerce that occurs in general consumer auctions.

Liquidation brokers

firms that finds buyers for unusable and excess inventory.

Reward-based crowdfunding

investors pay in advance for products (or services) to be delivered when the company makes them using the invested funds.

Auctioneer

manages the whole auction process.

Usenet newsgroups

message posting areas on Usenet computers in which interested persons (primarily from the education and research communities) can discuss specific topic areas.

Mobile wallets

mobile phones that function credit cards.

Rooting

modifying an Android operating system.

Jailbreaking

modifying an Apple iPhone's operating system.

Reverse auction

multiple sellers submit price bids to an auctioneer who represents a single buyer.

Seller-bid auction

multiple sellers submit price bids to an auctioneer who represents a single buyer.

Lock-in effect

name used by economists to describe the basic economic fact where existing auction sites, such as eBay, are inherently more valuable to customers than new auction sites.

Sniping software

observes auction progress until the last second or two of the auction clock. Just as the auction is about to expire, the sniping software places a bid high enough to win the auction (unless that bid exceeds a limit set by the sniping software's owner).

Massive open online course (MOOC)

online course that is offered at no cost and can attract hundreds of thousands of students.

Shill bidder

people employed by the seller or the auctioneer who can make bids on behalf of the seller.

Idea-based social networking

people participating in idea-based social media.

Bidders

potential buyers.

Bids

prices a bidder is willing to pay for the item.

Usenet

set of interconnected computers devoted to storing information on specific topics.

Tweets

short messages sent from one Twitter user to another.

Reverse bid

site routes the visitor's request to a group of participating merchants who reply to the visitor by e-mail with offers to supply the item at a particular price.

Meetups

sites that allow people to discuss issues, plan strategies, and arrange in-person meetings.

Crowdfunding

social networking sites that provide funds for a business idea or entrepreneurs who can sell partial ownership in their ventures to investors.

Open source software

software developed by a community of programmers who make the software available for download at no cost.

Vickrey auctions

synonymous with second-price sealed-bid auctions. Named for William Vickrey, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Economics for his studies of the properties of this auction type.

Auction consignment services

take an item and create an online auction for that item, handle the transaction, and remit the balance of the proceeds after deducting a fee that ranges from 25 to 50 percent of the selling price obtained.

Snipe

the act of placing a winning bid at the last second.

Minimum bid increment

the amount by which one bid must exceed the previous bid.

Private valuations

the amounts a bidder is willing to pay for an item that is up for auction.

Monetizing

the conversion of existing regular site visitors seeking free information or services into fee-paying subscribers or purchasers of services.

Social shopping

the practice of bringing buyers and sellers together in a social network to facilitate retail sales.

Microlending

the practice of lending very small amounts of money to people who are starting or operating small businesses, especially in developing countries.

Minimum bid

the price at which an auction begins.

Winner's curse

the psychological phenomenon where bidders risk becoming caught up in the excitement of competitive bidding and then bidding more than their private valuations.

Second-price sealed-bid auction

the same as the first-price sealed-bid auction except that the highest bidder is awarded the item at the price bid by the second-highest bidder.

Participatory journalism

trend toward having readers help write their own news.

Social networking

The intra-community interaction among members of a virtual community.

Microblogs

Web sites such as Twitter that function as a very informal blog site with entries (messages, or tweets) that are limited to 140 characters in length.

Social networking site

Web sites that facilitate interactions among members of a virtual community.

Proxy bid

a bid that automatically increases to the next highest increment needed to exceed any bid, up to a bidder-specified maximum bid.

Phablet

a combination of "phone" and "tablet".

Tablet devices

a device that is smaller (with fewer capabilities) than a laptop computer, yet larger than a smartphone.

Descending-price auctions

a form of open auction in which bidding starts at a high price and drops until a bidder accepts the price. Synonymous with Dutch auctions.

Dutch auction

a form of open auction in which bidding starts at a high price and drops until a bidder accepts the price. Synonymous with descending-price auctions.

Group purchasing site

a site where the seller posts an item with a tentative price. As individual buyers enter bids on the item, the site operators negotiate with the seller to obtain a lower price. The posted price will decrease as the number of bids increases, but only if the number of bids increases. Synonymous with group shopping site.

Group shopping site

a site where the seller posts an item with a tentative price. As individual buyers enter bids on the item, the site operators negotiate with the seller to obtain a lower price. The posted price will decrease as the number of bids increases, but only if the number of bids increases. Thus, a group shopping site builds up the number of buyers sufficiently to encourage the seller to offer a quantity discount. Synonymous with group purchasing site.

Idea-based social media

abstract communities based on the connections between ideas.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

allows Web pages formatted in HTML to be displayed on devices with small screens, such as mobile phones.

Short messaging service (SMS)

allows mobile phone users to send short text messages to each other.