The New Secret Sauce For E-Commerce

prostoalex writes "The hottest e-commerce trend this year? APIs and opening up databases to outside developers, says Information Week. There are currently 50,000 software developers in Amazon.com Web Services program, while eBay enjoys the presence of 8,000 companies and individual developers in its API program. There are 30 million XML queries performed on eBay servers daily."

Comments

Salespeople become obsolete?

[baywulf]

How long before salespeople become obsolete for all but the most expensive items? You can have software agents look out for items that interest your, compare prices and features and make suggestions based on your previous purchases.

Re:Auction Snipers?

[wayward]

But, buyers are seldom "perfectly rational." Once someone bids on an item, the bidder forms an attachment to it -- when outbid, there's a competition with the other bidders. Bidders rationalize raising their previous "maximum price", because they really want the item, and "maybe it's worth more than I thought."

I think you're right. On a side note, it's fascinated me to watch the drama surrounding some of the Greek pins on Ebay. Some members got very concerned about "rescuing" their organization's pins from outsiders, and as a result, the prices have jumped. http://college3.nytimes.com/guests/articles/2002/0 8/11/1029512.xml

Re:Auction Snipers?

[AuMatar]

Its not irrational to raise your price. I typicly start with a low price, so I recieve email notification if someone outbids me. Then I know their will be competition on the item. I also sometimes bid low on several of the same items, planning to be outbid and drop all but 1. This way I can continue to bid on the low items, while not possibly being stuck paying for all of them.

Also, when I do a "normal" bid, I put in not my maximum for a product, but a fiar price. Which is frequently lower than my maximum.