![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
an odd question...
18/7/09 19:24Help me figure something out, minna. I've been prowling ebay recently, bidding on manga lot auctions, and I see that one bidding trait I noticed waaaaay back when I joined ebay all those years ago still holds true. And I'm wondering WHY people do this.
Let me set up the conundrum. Say there's an item I want to win. Current bid is $1.00, which is also the starting price. I debate the item's worth, shipping, my budget, etc, and decide I will pay $20 for it. So that's how much I bid: $20.
The item already had one bidder, so the current price had been $1. My bid increases the price to $1.25, which means the first bidder, who I outbid, had only bid $1.
Later, the original bidder returns and tries to outbid me. First they bid $2.50, then $5, then $10, then $15, then $25. That last bid finally defeats me, and the auction price ends up $20.50, with them as high bidder. I do not bid again, as $20 really was all I was willing to pay.
My question is: if the original bidder was willing to pay $25 for the item, then why didn't they bid $25 in the first place? If they had bid that much originally, the price would have remained at $1 unless someone came along and tried to outbid them. If no one did, they would have won at $1, even though they were willing to go up to $25. It would not have cost them any extra to just bid $25 from the start.
I have witnessed this happening countless times in my 10 years of ebay bidding. Sometimes the tiny increments bidder manages to defeat me, sometimes they don't. I once saw someone bid 8 times in a row before they finally knocked me out of the running.
So. What is the reasoning behind this pattern of behavior? Any theories?
Let me set up the conundrum. Say there's an item I want to win. Current bid is $1.00, which is also the starting price. I debate the item's worth, shipping, my budget, etc, and decide I will pay $20 for it. So that's how much I bid: $20.
The item already had one bidder, so the current price had been $1. My bid increases the price to $1.25, which means the first bidder, who I outbid, had only bid $1.
Later, the original bidder returns and tries to outbid me. First they bid $2.50, then $5, then $10, then $15, then $25. That last bid finally defeats me, and the auction price ends up $20.50, with them as high bidder. I do not bid again, as $20 really was all I was willing to pay.
My question is: if the original bidder was willing to pay $25 for the item, then why didn't they bid $25 in the first place? If they had bid that much originally, the price would have remained at $1 unless someone came along and tried to outbid them. If no one did, they would have won at $1, even though they were willing to go up to $25. It would not have cost them any extra to just bid $25 from the start.
I have witnessed this happening countless times in my 10 years of ebay bidding. Sometimes the tiny increments bidder manages to defeat me, sometimes they don't. I once saw someone bid 8 times in a row before they finally knocked me out of the running.
So. What is the reasoning behind this pattern of behavior? Any theories?
