A New Study Says eBay Saves Billions

1/29/2008
Matt Nathanson
A New Study by U-Maryland Researchers claims eBay saves buyers billions of dollars each year

A study by two associate professors at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland has reported that popular auction site eBay users saved $19 billion in 2007 at the popular auction site.

Researchers Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli studied transactions on eBay for the year 2003, and extrapolated their results to arrive at the $19 billion figure.

Using software created by another professor at the school, the researchers studied more than 4,500 U.S. and European eBay auctions and were able to calculate the difference between the actual purchase price of items and the top price bidders were willing to pay. They found that this difference averaged to be about four dollars per sale.

The complete study, titled "Consumer Surplus in Online Auctions," will be published in the Journal of Information Systems Research.

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