• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.33-49
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• 2010

We empirically examine the impact of online auction knowledge and category-specific knowledge on the final price of online auctions. Specifically, we question how the relationship between buying and selling experiences affects the final prices of online auctions. Related to the trust between buyers and sellers, we examine the multiple interactions between a buyer-seller pairand aim to identify how these repeated transactions influence the final price. To contrast these effects with other product related factors, we focus on so called 'common value' auctions of vintage stamps on eBay, in which the ex-post value of the product is the same among participating agents’ perceived value. Online auction of stamps provides a representative setting to examine the relationship between market experience and the auction participation behavior in the common value auction, as it provides the book value of stamp as well as price variation across individual buyers with different expertise levels. Our analysis of over 3000 stamps auctions on eBay indicates a significantly high frequency of buyer-seller (pair) interactions, thus suggesting a 'relationship view' of auctions. The work validates five hypotheses derived from the existing theory in economics, marketing, and information systems. Through the common-value auction data, we find that seller's online auction experience and category-specific experience favor sellers by increasing the final price. However, buyer's online auction experience does not affect the final price, but buyer's category-specific experience favors buyers by decreasing the final price. We find that the trust between two trading parties increases the final price.