I.T. Vibe - Does fear or excitement drive eBay bidders?

For many years we have been fed the line that bidders on eBay (or any other online auction site) can easily become blinded by the excitement of bidding for an item in real time and seeing their bid being the winner. Ebay has warned people to be careful and to think about what they are doing but researchers in New York have carried out a very interesting experiment.

Using eBay as the guinea pig they sat down a number of internet users and monitored their reactions when they were bidding for items. Using the information derived from the experiment each participant was then asked what drove them to bid over the odds for an item and what pushed them forward. While there was a mix of excitement and the fear of losing, it seems that it was fear which drove many people to bid far too high for items – often paying a higher price than many retail outlets.

The experiment also showed that those who worked on the fear of not winning the item showed the most extreme bodily reactions compared to those who bid on ‘excitement'. Perhaps this now explains why many of us have second thoughts after a bidding frenzy has brought us many items we don't really need!

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