DRESSED TO IMPRESS: THE EFFECT OF LISTING QUALITY IN EBAY’S ONLINE AUCTION MARKETPLACE

Abstract

With rising competition in the eBay auction marketplace, sellers must optimize their auction strategies in order to effectively reach buyers. One way to do this is by increasing the quality of their auction listing—that is, improving the amount of information about a product, making the product easy for buyers to find, or increasing the aesthetic value of the listing. I use a hedonic regression model to explore the relationship between listing quality and final selling price in Apple iPhones on eBay in 2007. I find that in listings of high aesthetic value, listing title length increases the price by $1.24 on average, and subtitle length increases the price by $0.46 on average. I also find that the price premium of the high quality listing is equal to $17.89 on average, or 2.86%