Online Reverse Auctions via Wireless Instant Message Networks

Online auctions topic has been a popular issue over recent years. However, in this paper, we proposed reverse auctions based on mobile commerce systems via Internet. The buyers can post photos and desired prices of products on the systems by handheld mobile devices or desktops. Moreover, the system also integrates the product poster and instant messenger for the mobile devices which immediately alerts the buyer for the new prices offered by the sellers. Advantages of reverse auction via Internet are the buyer not need to bargain prices with sellers. Meanwhile, it is the buyer directly "controls" the market, not the sellers, since customers do not have advertisement budgets to claim their requirements. Although reverse auction was proposed in the literature, the contribution of this paper is two-folded. First, wireless mobile networks are conducted in the e-commerce, not just using traditional Internet, where the scenario should be different. Besides, it should be noted that due to the inherent limitation of mobile instruments (not as so powerful as computers), the design to transfer the most work to be done in the agency (proxy servers), instead of the handheld mobile devices (client), is required. Further, miscellaneous instant messengers are also integrated by the mobile instant message integrator (MIMI) system in this study