Empirical Investigation of EachNet: The eBay Model of C2C Online Auction in China

Motivated by the rapid growth of and an increasing interest in the Chinese online auction market, we empirically investigated EachNet (www.eachnet.com), a highly popular eBay model of a Chinese consumer-to-consumer online auction site. Based on EachNet 's auction mechanisms, a general framework was developed to guide the evaluation of various seller- and buyer-specific factors affecting the outcomes of online auctions, as well as the interrelationships among these factors. Three product-independent performance indicators, namely success-or-failure, effectiveness, and satisfaction, were proposed for assessing the online auction outcome instead of basing assessment on the final price that may vary significantly among different product categories. Our empirical results suggest that the impact of seller characteristics and seller-determined auction attributes on auction performance are partially mediated by the volume of bids generated by all competing bidders during the auction. The implications of this study are also discussed to encourage further research in this area.