eBay Reputation System Works

A new paper by US researchers talks about the effectiveness of the eBay reputation system. They found that established sellers made, on average, 8% more revenue on sales. That’s kind of expected, and it shows that the feedback system works in that it rewards the established sellers. However, there was a little surprise. When they compared sales for a number of new sellers, they found that:

…one or two negative feedbacks for our new sellers did not affect buyers’ willingness-to-pay.

Interesting stuff.

[tags]eBay, study, sellers, sales[/tags]