Videolink: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhUDev-UEms
In our technology of the week video, we talked about online auctions.
An auction is actually a common name for several types of sales where the price is neither set nor arrived at by negotiation, but is discovered through the process of competitive and open bidding.
Today, The internet age has transformed auctions into a truly open process in which thousands of goods (from books to ships) and services (from air travel to legal advice) may be offered for bidding by anyone from anywhere and at any time.
We discuss two different online auction sites, Catawiki and Vakantieveilingen.
Catawaki is an online auction house which focuses on collector’s items. Catawiki was the fast growing internet company of Europe in 2015. There revenue increased the past four years with 45080%.
What are the strengths of Catawiki?
1: they have a specific target group: Collectors. What started with comic books is now extended to 40 different categories, from model trains to wine.
2: Catawiki is not only an site with auctions, it is also a place where collectors find each other. So Catawiki also becomes a meeting place where collectors can share their hobby.
3: Catawiki has more than 30,000 lots weekly sold. Catawiki has 12 million visitors each month.
They have 160 auctioneers who are composing the auctions. The auctioneers make sure the auctions are varied and of high quality.
Vakantieveilingen is an Dutch online auction platform which started in 2006. It became big in 2008 because of the crisis. Vakantieveilingen has now daily more than 200.000 visitors who are participating in auctions. There are monthly more than 150.000 auctions.
What differs vakantieveilingen from many other auctions sites is that they are putting products and services from companies up for auctions. All of the products and services that are sold are owned by companies.
The weaknesses of catawiki are that people who want to sell something at catawiki have to do that with items which are at least 75 euro worth. An auctioneer have to determine if an item is worth that amount of money. If it’s below 75 euro, you will not be able to sell the item. Further, even if your item is estimated for at least 75 euro you could still end up selling it for only 1 euro. You cannot define a minimum price with most products. Only with very expensive products you are able to define a reserve price.
Also, the auctioneers are responsible for handling disputes, not catawiki them self. This means that if a auction goes wrong and a buyer ends up with the wrong product, the auctioneer is responsible for handling this problem. If the auctioneer decides it is not his problem, the buyer will end up with the wrong product.
Vakantieveiligen is actually a sort of platform where companies can offer their services and products. People can bid on those products and services. But customers cannot leave reviews on vakantieveilingen. For consumers it is harder to determine if the company offers a nice deal or if it is sort of a rip off. Consumers first have to search on other sites if the company is reliable.
Another weakness is that a much heard complaint is that if you win an auction at vakantieveilingen for a certain amount of money, there are often extra costs that aren’t always clear and good indicated.
What should Catawiki and vakantieveilingen do to turn their weaknesses into strengths.
Catawiki should enable to offer items lower than 75 euro’s. 75 euro’s is quite a boundary for most people. And if you only wish to sell 1 item of a collection you may not able to do so.
Further, is should try to increase their reliability by taking responsibilities for disputes instead of push this problem off to the auctioneers.
Vakantieveilingen should create a review platform where consumers can write reviews about the products and services they purchased trough vakantieveilingen.
Also vakantieveilingen needs to show extra costs above of the auction price more clear, so consumers know better what the exact costs are.
Authors: Wim Sangers, Tim kaslander, Roland Haring & Tiziano Gonsalves
