CampusAuctionMarket.com Brings Internet Auctions Local

by David Jiang

Increasingly, the Internet is allowing us to run businesses that ordinarily would be impossible for small groups of individuals. One on-campus Canadian example of the empowering nature of the Internet is www.campusauctionmarket.com.

I had a chance to speak with Peter T.L. Popkowski Leszczyc, a School of Business professor at the University of Alberta and Director of www.campusauctionmarket.com about this interesting addition to the e-commerce landscape. Peter explained that: "On September 5th 2002 researchers at the University of Alberta started a local Internet auction site." I was astounded at the take-up of this site. According to Peter, "Since the opening, over 1,000 people have registered on CampusAuctionMarket.com. During this period close to 1500 auctions have been posted by students and local residents, resulting in approximately 5,000 bids, and over $40,000 in sales."

Online auctioning's most famous company, www.ebay.com, has been a consistently profitable business-which in these times in saying a lot. However, on a site as large as eBay, often buyer and seller never meet each other. Indeed, for Canadians using eBay, the buyer and seller are often located in separate countries. In contrast, the new auction market started by Peter and his associates is an online site performing a local market clearing function rather than aimed at helping people at a distance to communicate and conduct business.

Campusactionmarket brings auctioning back to being local, like old time farming community auction markets. Buyers and sellers can meet in person to complete transactions, eliminating the need to send payment before receiving the items and shipping costs.

What sort of things do people usually buy? "Basically you can sell almost anything through Internet auctions," says Peter, who went on to note: "however, so far the most popular items have been books, computer products, videos, jewelry and watches, CD's, and electronics (such as stereo's, walkmans, etc.). The local aspect makes this site is also ideal for larger products like furniture, appliances and automobiles."

During the period of November 5th - 20th www.campusauctionmarket.com will be running a number of online auctions each day, lasting only a day. These will be for a number of products (including stereo's, cordless phones, CD players, VCR's, movies, and more). All auctions will have no reserve price and bidding will start at $0.01, as well as other prizes.

Wondering about how to take advantage of this promotion? Confused as to what a reserve price is? Peter provided the handy primer you'll find below for those of you who want to join CampusAuctionMarket or are simply interested in learning a little more about this new sort of cyberspace market: online auctions. (The site is open to U of A students and residents of the greater Edmonton area. Registration is free and detailed instructions on how to proceed are provided at www.campusauctionmarket.com.)

How to buy and sell products or services through CampusAuctionMarket.com

The first thing to do is to register, which just takes a few minutes, after which you are ready to start buying and selling. To buy, all you need to do is to place a bid in an auction. If you are the high bid at the completion of the auction you win the auction and pay the price of your bid for the item.

It is easy to list an item for sale, just follow the directions (Fill out the information in the New auction item template). Make sure to provide a clear description of the item, and it is best to add a picture of the item you are selling (a picture in gif or jpg format can simply be added by the click of your mouse).

You can specify a reserve price, which is the minimum price you are willing to accept for the product. Or you can have bidding start at $0.01. A reserve price will protect you from getting too little, however, many reserve price items do not sell as the sellers set the reserve prices too high!

It is also possible to specify a "Buy price." A bid for this amount will end the auction immediately.
Finally you can select any duration from one to fourteen days. The longer the duration the more people will see your auction. However, a low value item may attract less attention if the duration is too long.

For more information please take a look at our website at: www.campusauctionmarket.com , or you can contact us at Campusauctionmarket@ualberta.ca.

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