Slashdot Mirror
The Science of eBay
PreacherTom writes "Professors of marketing, economics, management, and psychology have published dozens of papers to try to explain how and why eBay users buy and sell online. At the same time, there is no shortage of people offering helpful hints online. Kerry Miller takes a novel approach, offering 10 tips to maximize your profit that are based on a summary of these scientific analyses, rather than just 'educated' guessing."
Most of the tips are common sense or obvious to people who have used eBay a few times, to both buy and sell.
It probably lies in the difference between knowing and doing. You can know something, but not act on that knowledge, and then after the fact say "oh, I knew I should have done XYZ". Of course, humans tend to forget the times that we were wrong about these guesses.
Most economics proffessors know that there is no sure-fire way to make money apart from saving and investing carefully. They know that just as many people lose money in the market as make it. But then again, you have some people that go to business school that don't teach, like Warren Buffet...
Just a like between action and knowledge. Most economics profs I would guess have a large amount of money in savings, bonds and blue chip stocks.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
It's funny that many of the auction that I have seen on eBay actually close higher then if you had bought it at a retail store.
I'm sure that there are plenty of people who are just happier in academia than in the "real world". If your needs are simple and you're going to make more money than you know what to do with either way, the person who delights in research is going to be content with a university position.
Some are. My undergrad econ professor was a millionaire who consulted for major companies, but taught freshman-level econ anyway because he enjoyed it.
That may not be representative, but just because they're in academia doesn't mean there's no substance to what they're teaching. Some people just like teaching, or like the academic environment, or aren't interested in the sacrifices they'd have to make to really do well in business. Or have already done very well in business and are teaching from quasi-retirement, or whatever. You get the idea.
I am the man with no sig!