Selling Practices in Online Fixed-Price Marketplaces

In the last decade, there has been an explosion of online commercial activity enabled by the World Wide Web (WWW). In Brazil, probably by cultural influence, online auctions are not so popular, since users prefer fixed-price for online negotiation. This work presents a characterization and analysis of fixed-price online negotiations. Using actual data from a Brazilian marketplace, we analyze selling practices, considering seller profiles and selling strategies. We study and confirm several important hypotheses about selling practices in online marketplaces, which allow us to state interesting conclusions, such as: the product category impacts the seller profile and the selling strategies; and the best selling practices vary for different products.