Modeling Online Auctions

The new data challenges associated with online auctions motivate the need for clever statistical ideas and new statistical innovation in order to gain knowledge about bidders, sellers, prices, and a host of other questions of interest.

In this book, the authors draw upon their experience of working with online auction data and introduce the reader to state-of-the-art statistical methodology for extracting new knowledge from online auction data.

Rather than approach the topic from the traditional game-theoretic route, the authors treat the online auction mechanism as a new type of data generator, as well as use statistical and data mining methods to collect, explore, model, and forecast data that arises from online auction databases.

Every effort is made to embellish cross-disciplinary fertilization between statistics, data mining, marketing, information systems, and economics and related fields.

Keywords: online auction data, statistical methods, data mining, game theory, eCommerce research, uBid, eBay