“Consumerism may be the downfall of civilization, but in the meantime, discovering a longed-for item is an incomparable thrill.” In this week’s WIRED Classics, epsneider explores the history of the gamified marketplace (From 2011)
Really, though, the biggest factor in the decline of the auction may simply be that the novelty of bidding wore off. "The Internet stopped being a source of wonder and became a place to do certain kinds of business," Koehn says. "Once that happens, you start to think about things like 'Does it make sense to spend this much time on an auction when I might not even get the item in the end?'" In econospeak, the hedonic benefits of bidding on eBay diminished.
This wasn't necessarily irrational for sellers: One interesting study shows that bidders seem to neglect high shipping costs when they bid on items with low starting prices. But once Internet shoppers came to see free or low-cost shipping as their birthright, eBay's high shipping costs became a serious disadvantage. So, too, did persistent concerns about trust on the site.
One can certainly blame eBay for not doing enough to mitigate these problems. At times, the company seemed to have bought into its own mythology, assuming that its business was so intrinsically revolutionary that it could run on autopilot. Former CEOfamously joked that "a monkey could drive this train." Wingo accuses eBay in those days of "drinking the auction Kool-Aid." The management, he says, "didn't pay enough attention to what consumers really wanted.
In any case, whatever eBay may have done wrong, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the flight from auctions was not ultimately the company's fault. Instead, the shift was largely driven by the way commerce on the Internet has changed. Businesses have become savvier and more flexible in their pricing, just as consumers have become savvier in the way they shop.
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