Primary
Date: 2015-10-07; view: 360.
Types
- English auction, also known as an open ascending price auction. This type of auction is arguably the most common form of auction in use today. Participants bid openly against one another, with each subsequent bid required to be higher than the previous bid. An auctioneer may announce prices, bidders may call out their bids themselves (or have a proxy call out a bid on their behalf), or bids may be submitted electronically with the highest current bid publicly displayed. In some cases a maximum bid might be left with the auctioneer, who may bid on behalf of the bidder according to the bidder's instructions. The auction ends when no participant is willing to bid further, at which point the highest bidder pays their bid. Alternatively, if the seller has set a minimum sale price in advance (the 'reserve' price) and the final bid does not reach that price the item remains unsold. Sometimes the auctioneer sets a minimum amount by which the next bid must exceed the current highest bid. The most significant distinguishing factor of this auction type is that the current highest bid is always available to potential bidders. The English auction is commonly used for selling goods, most prominently antiques and artwork, but also secondhand goods and real estate.
- Dutch auction also known as an open descending price auction. In the traditional Dutch auction the auctioneer begins with a high asking price which is lowered until some participant is willing to accept the auctioneer's price. The winning participant pays the last announced price. The Dutch auction is named for its best known example, the Dutch tulip auctions. ("Dutch auction" is also sometimes used to describe online auctions where several identical goods are sold simultaneously to an equal number of high bidders.) In addition to cut flower sales in the Netherlands, Dutch auctions have also been used for perishable commodities such as fish and tobacco. The Dutch auction is not widely used.
- Sealed first-price auction, also known as a first-price sealed-bid auction (FPSB). In this type of auction all bidders simultaneously submit sealed bids so that no bidder knows the bid of any other participant. The highest bidder pays the price they submitted. This type of auction is distinct from the English auction, in that bidders can only submit one bid each. Furthermore, as bidders cannot see the bids of other participants they cannot adjust their own bids accordingly. This kind of bid produces the same outcome as Dutch auction. What are effectively sealed first-price auctions are commonly called tendering for procurement by companies and organisations, particularly for government contracts and auctions for mining leases.
- Vickrey auction, also known as a sealed-bid second-price auction. This is identical to the sealed first-price auction except that the winning bidder pays the second-highest bid rather than his or her own. In some ways this is similar to the proxy bidding system used by the Internet auction site eBay, where a participant who has bid more than any other bidder pays the current highest bid plus the current bidding increment, rather than the actual amount of their bid. Although extremely important in auction theory, in practice Vickrey auctions are rarely used.
- Multiunit auctions sell more than one identical item at the same time, rather than having separate auctions for each. This type can be further classified as a uniform price auction or a discriminatory price auction.
and Secondary
- All-pay auction is an auction in which all bidders must pay their bids regardless of whether they win. The highest bidder wins the item. All-pay auctions are primarily of academic interest, and may be used to model lobbying or bribery (bids are political contributions) or competitions such as a running race.
- Auction by the candle. A type of auction, used in England for selling ships, in which the highest bid laid on the table by the time a burning candle goes out wins.
- Bidding fee auction, also known as a penny auction, often requires that each participant must pay a fixed price to place each bid, typically one penny (hence the name) higher than the current bid. When an auction's time expires, the highest bidder wins the item and must pay a final bid price. Examples are Madbid, QuiBids.com, Beezid, Dealdash or Sweepola. Unlike in a conventional auction, the final price is typically very much lower than the value of the item, but all bidders (not just the winner) will have paid for each bid placed; the winner will buy the item at a very low price (plus price of right-to-bids used), all the losers will have paid, and the seller will typically receive significantly more than the value of the item.
- Buyout auction is an auction with an additional set price (the 'buyout' price) that any bidder can accept at any time during the auction, thereby immediately ending the auction and winning the item. If no bidder chooses to utilize the buyout option before the end of bidding the highest bidder wins and pays their bid. Buyout options can be either temporary or permanent. In a temporary-buyout auction the option to buy out the auction is not available after the first bid is placed. In a permanent-buyout auction the buyout option remains available throughout the entire auction until the close of bidding. The buyout price can either remain the same throughout the entire auction, or vary throughout according to rules or simply as decided by the seller.
- Combinatorial auction is any auction for the simultaneous sale of more than one item where bidders can place bids on an "all-or-nothing" basis on "packages" rather than just individual items. That is, a bidder can specify that he or she will pay for items A and B, but only if he or she gets both. In combinatorial auctions, determining the winning bidder(s) can be a complex process where even the bidder with the highest individual bid is not guaranteed to win. For example, in an auction with four items (W, X, Y and Z), if Bidder A offers $50 for items W & Y, Bidder B offers $30 for items W & X, Bidder C offers $5 for items X & Z and Bidder D offers $30 for items Y & Z, the winners will be Bidders B & D while Bidder A misses out because the combined bids of Bidders B & D is higher ($60) than for Bidders A and C ($55).
- Generalized second-price auction
- Japanese auction is a variation of the English auction. When the bidding starts no new bidders can join, and each bidder must continue to bid each round or drop out. It has similarities to theante in Poker.
- Lloyd's syndicate auction.
- Mystery auction is a type of auction where bidders bid for boxes or envelopes containing various items, usually on the hope that the items will be humorous, interesting, or valuable. In the early days of eBay's popularity, sellers began promoting boxes or packages of random and usually low-value items not worth selling by themselves.
- No-reserve auction (NR), also known as an absolute auction, is an auction in which the item for sale will be sold regardless of price. From the seller's perspective, advertising an auction as having no reserve price can be desirable because it potentially attracts a greater number of bidders due to the possibility of a bargain. If more bidders attend the auction, a higher price might ultimately be achieved because of heightened competition from bidders. This contrasts with a reserve auction, where the item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller. In practice, an auction advertised as "absolute" or "no-reserve" may nonetheless still not sell to the highest bidder on the day, for example, if the seller withdraws the item from the auction or extends the auction period indefinitely, although these practices may be restricted by law in some jurisdictions or under the terms of sale available from the auctioneer.
- Reserve auction is an auction where the item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller; that is, the seller reserves the right to accept or reject the highest bid. In these cases a set 'reserve' price known to the auctioneer, but not necessarily to the bidders, may have been set, below which the item may not be sold. The reserve price may befixed or discretionary. In the latter case, the decision to accept a bid is deferred to the auctioneer, who may accept a bid that is marginally below it. A reserve auction is safer for the seller than a no-reserve auction as they are not required to accept a low bid, but this could result in a lower final price if less interest is generated in the sale.
- Reverse auction is a type of auction in which the roles of the buyer and the seller are reversed, with the primary objective to drive purchase prices downward. While ordinary auctions provide suppliers the opportunity to find the best price among interested buyers, reverse auctions give buyers a chance to find the lowest-price supplier. During a reverse auction, suppliers may submit multiple offers, usually as a response to competing suppliers' offers, bidding down the price of a good or service to the lowest price they are willing to receive. By revealing the competing bids in real time to every participating supplier, reverse auctions promote “information transparency”. This, coupled with the dynamic bidding process, improves the chances of reaching the fair market value of the item. The reverse auction is widely used by corporations, state and local Governments, and other organizations. The uses are vast and include services as well as goods.
- Senior auction is a variation on the all-pay auction, and has a defined loser in addition to the winner. The top two bidders must pay their full final bid amounts, and only the highest wins the auction. The intent is to make the high bidders bid above their upper limits. In the final rounds of bidding, when the current losing party has hit their maximum bid, they are encouraged to bid over their maximum (seen as a small loss) to avoid losing their maximum bid with no return (a very large loss).
- Silent auction is a variant of the English auction in which bids are written on a sheet of paper. At the predetermined end of the auction, the highest listed bidder wins the item. This auction is often used in charity events, with many items auctioned simultaneously and "closed" at a common finish time. The auction is "silent" in that there is no auctioneer selling individual items, the bidders writing their bids on a bidding sheet often left on a table near the item. At charity auctions, bid sheets usually have a fixed starting amount, predetermined bid increments, and a "guaranteed bid" amount which works the same as a "buy now" amount. Other variations of this type of auction may include sealed bids. The highest bidder pays the price he or she submitted.
- Top-up auction is a variation on the all-pay auction, primarily used for charity events. Losing bidders must pay the difference between their bid and the next lowest bid. The winning bidder pays the amount bid for the item, without top-up.
- Walrasian auction or Walrasian tâtonnement is an auction in which the auctioneer takes bids from both buyers and sellers in a market of multiple goods. The auctioneer progressively either raises or drops the current proposed price depending on the bids of both buyers and sellers, the auction concluding when supply and demand exactly balance. As a high price tends to dampen demand while a low price tends to increase demand, in theory there is a particular price somewhere in the middle where supply and demand will match.
- Other auctions: Other auction types also exist, such as Simultaneous Ascending Auction, Anglo-Dutch auction, Private value auction, Common value auction.
Auctions can differ in the number of participants:
- In a supply (or reverse) auction, m sellers offer a good that a buyer requests
- In a demand auction, n buyers bid for a good being sold
- In a double auction n buyers bid to buy goods from m sellers
- Prices are bid by buyers and asked (or offered) by sellers. Auctions may also differ by the procedure for bidding (or asking, as the case may be):
- In an open auction participants may repeatedly bid and are aware of each other's previous bids.
- In a closed auction buyers and/or sellers submit sealed bids
Auctions may differ as to the price at which the item is sold, whether the first (best) price, the second price, the first unique price or some other. Auctions may set a reservation price which is the least/maximum acceptable price for which a good may be sold/bought.
Without modification, auction generally refers to an open, demand auction, with or without a reservation price (or reserve), with the item sold to the highest bidder.
Common uses
Auctions are publicly and privately seen in several contexts and almost anything can be sold at auction. Some typical auction arenas include the following:
Wool buyers' room at a wool auction, Newcastle, NSW.
- The antique business, where besides being an opportunity for trade they also serve as social occasions and entertainment
- In the sale of collectibles such as stamps, coins, classic cars, fine art and luxury real estate
- The wine auction business, where serious collectors can gain access to rare bottles and mature vintages, not typically available through retail channels
- In the sale of all types of real property including residential and commercial real estate, farms, vacant lots and land.
- For the sale of consumer second-hand goods of all kinds, particularly farm (equipment) and house clearances and online auctions.
- Sale of industrial machinery, both surplus or through insolvency.
- In commodities auctions, like the fish wholesale auctions
- In livestock auctions where sheep, cattle, pigs and other livestock are sold. Sometimes very large numbers of stock are auctioned, such as the regular sales of 50,000 or more sheep during a day in New South Wales.
- In wool auctions where international agents purchase lots of wool
- Thoroughbred horses, where yearling horses and other bloodstock are auctioned.
- In legal contexts where forced auctions occur, as when one's farm or house is sold at auction on the courthouse steps.
- Travel tickets. One example is SJ AB in Sweden auctioning surplus at Tradera (Swedish eBay).
- Holidays. A variety of holidays are available for sale online particularly via eBay. Vacation rentals appear to be most common. Many holiday auction websites have launched but failed.
- Self storage units. In certain jurisdictions, if a storage facility's tenant fails to pay his/her rent, the contents of his/her locker(s) may be sold at a public auction. Several television shows focus on such auctions, including Storage Wars and Auction Hunters.
Although less publicly visible, the most economically important auctions are the commodities auctions in which the bidders are businesses even up tocorporation level. Examples of this type of auction include:
- Sales of businesses
- Spectrum auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to use portions of the electromagnetic spectrum for communications (e.g., mobile phone networks)
- Private electronic markets using combinatorial auction techniques to continuously sell commodities (coal, iron ore, grain, water...) to a pre-qualified group of buyers (based on price and non-price factors)
- Timber auctions, in which companies purchase licenses to log on government land
- Timber allocation auctions, in which companies purchase timber directly from the government Forest Auctions
- Electricity auctions, in which large-scale generators and consumers of electricity bid on generating contracts
- Environmental auctions, in which companies bid for licenses to avoid being required to decrease their environmental impact. These include auctions in emissions trading schemes.
- Debt auctions, in which governments sell debt instruments, such as bonds, to investors. The auction is usually sealed and the uniform price paid by the investors is typically the best non-winning bid. In most cases, investors can also place so called non-competitive bids, which indicates an interest to purchase the debt instrument at the resulting price, whatever it may be
- Auto auctions, in which car dealers purchase used vehicles to retail to the public.
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