Online auctioning and recommendations: The eBidLand platform

Online auctions are marketplaces with dynamic pricing that bring individual buyers and sellers together; the participants bid according to a fixed protocol depending on the specific auction type. Today there are many online auction systems available, accounting for a large part of the overall ecommerce. However, most of them implement only one auction type; in this paper we introduce a new platform, called eBidLand, which offers the seller the possibility to choose between two auction types: a soft-close version of the English auction (to prevent auction sniping) and a Dutch auction. eBidLand is also enhanced with a trust and reputation system, as well as a robust recommendation system based on collaborative filtering. Usability, simplicity and intuitiveness, as well as low response times were the guidelines of the design process. An overview of the eBidLand principles, architecture and functionalities is presented in the paper.