Cultures of eBay
| Accepted abstracts Below are the abstracts which have been accepted for the Cultures of eBay conference from the first call for papers. Inconsistent Autonomies: Entangled subjects, architects of time and paradoxes in projects of self-employment based on eBay Katrin Amelang, M.A. Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin Abstract: Lately, people have increasingly started to create their on business on eBay using the platform as »springboard« to take off into self-employment. I want to describe what working and living as a professional eBay seller may look like and how everyday practices of managing an eBay business are organized. My aim is to frame the issue of self-employment as a professional practice as well as a life script. On the basis of ethnographic work in 2003 I want to focus on eBay self-employment in Germany as a case in point in order to show how working subjects are entangled in controlling processes characterized by implicit persuasion rather than by coercion. The labour market is seen to be in transformation. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality and the way it operates on, in and through subjects, I want to emphasize the re-formation and re-invention of the subject as a self-governing entity and entrepreneurial self in these processes. In an ethnography of newly eBay-self-employed I have found rich stories of fitting eBay-business in various individual life projects, empowering moments through learning processes, being their own boss, redefining themselves and their work as eBay-sellers, as well as eBay-specific dependencies, autonomy and self-exploitation. The entrepreneurial agents where deeply embroiled in the paradoxical autonomy of independence, being both free and compelled to work. Their narrations can hardly be analysed as depicting either being empowered by or ignoring self-exploitation. Rather they illustrate the workings of controlling processes affecting a set of options for agency. They are taken into account by the individual by way of cultural logics articulated in common sense. The paradox becomes particularly obvious in the way working hours are managed: entrepreneurs are free to construct their own time regimes. The independence of their self-employment includes the freedom to restrict recreational time or suspend it altogether. However, the entrepreneurial subject needs recreation in order to maintain her or his project of self-management. The subject may only bargain with and cheat on it’s self. How this is managed in an environment of working at home and eBay having opened 24 hours I will illustrate exemplarily, telling the eBay-story of two of my interviewees, a self-employed couple. ___________________________________________________________________________ An eBay Japan's Mistake Mr Yasushi Fujita University of Texas Everybody knows that eBay has succeeded globally, but does not know that there is a country where eBay had failed its business. It is Japan. Why was eBay's business unsuccessful in Japan? There had been a prior player "Yahoo! Japan Auctions" in Japanese Internet auction market. EBay founded eBay Japan, Inc. to defeat it or even eliminate it. But this challenge became unsuccessful and eBay Japan, Inc. was dissolved. Thereafter, eBay Headquarter released a statement mentioning that eBay was intending to acquire Japanese Internet auction companies (even including Yahoo! Japan Auctions), but eBay has performed nothing in Japanese market yet. The auction items that eBay handles are thoroughly categorised and structured in directories. EBay users can reach an item which they want to bid on or purchase through tracing the directory tree. For instance, when you want to find a desktop PC memory module, you can trace directory layer of Computers & Networking > Desktop PC Components > Memory for Desktop PC in order, and may find an appropriate one. EBay Japan, Inc., however, constructed and provided another approach, which depended strictly on its search engine function. For a category Computers & Networking, sub-directories were not prepared at all. A search engine was done instead. It should be obvious that this style is quite inconvenient for every user. When a user enter keywords "desktop memory" for his wishing item, a listed PC itself whose description includes memory amount would be also fetched. In the same period, Google was about to magnify its business in Japan. Compared with Google, eBay Japan's search function was insufficient and unsatisfactory for the users. It can be mentioned that poor usability eliminated eBay itself from Japan. Further survey about the parties who selected this inappropriate tactics may be needed. ___________________________________________________________________________ Commerce and/or Community - eBay’s co-evolution of two different modes of ordering Torben Elgaard Jensen
Copenhagen Business School Department of Organization and Industrial Sociology In economic sociology and economic anthropology, debates over the culture - economy nexus have often been plagued by simplistic and unsubstantiated origin stories: In the beginning there were culture and gift exchange, but then commodities and markets were created. Or in the beginning there was an economic sphere but then culturalization came along. The present paper will begin with the opposite assumption, namely that the nature of culture and economy as well as the nature of the relationship between them are outcomes of a continual process of socio-technical development. This approach fits the case of eBay well, because eBay seems to have ‘grown’ commerce and community simultaneously. The paper will investigate eBay’s co-evolution and co-configuration of commerce and community. The history of eBay will be analysed as a series of steps where particular ‘rights’ and ‘obligations’ were defined for the buyers and sellers of goods at eBay. Simultaneously, opportunities for ‘community-interaction’ on messageboards and between individual users were enabled and constrained. In addition to this, particular regularized flows of information, benefits, status tokens, and money were arranged between the commerce and the community. Finally, the paper will discuss, which lessons, tensions, and dilemmas that emerge from the history of eBay’s commerce-community nexus. ___________________________________________________________________________ Receiving the message loud and clear? Audiencing and (web)sites of consumption. Joanna M Robson University of East Anglia This paper seeks to explore audiencing in an increasingly influential site of contemporary consumption, that of e.shopping websites. Audiencing - the process whereby the meaning of a cultural text is renegotiated by particular audiences in specific circumstances - emerged as a critique of more prescriptive analyses such as semiotics (see for example Fiske, 1992, 1994; Morley, 1980). As Hall (2003 [1980]) has noted, cultural texts may be encoded during production with their preferred reading, but this meaning may be decoded by audiences in quite different and unintentional ways. For reinterpretation to take place prior knowledge is required, therefore the audience is both the ‘source’ and the ‘receiver’ of cultural messages (Hall, 2003: 53). A greater understanding of the processes of (re)negotiation is vital, both to e.marketers and e.consumers, as everyday life becomes increasingly lived online. There is a general paucity of empirical research in this area and much of the evidence has focused on television viewing (Morley, 1980, 1992; Ang 1985, 1991). The audience, however, occupy a range of subject positions from that of movie-goer to Internet shopper, negotiating a variety of media from face-to-face interaction through to digital and electronic communication. Indeed, for shoppers, history has now taken them full circle in terms of marketing media, from goods being hidden from view behind the counter and delivered to the home unseen; the rise of the cornershop where goods were displayed but beyond the reach of the consumer; the emergence of the department store where boundaries between public and private space and property became blurred; the rise of the shopping mall which wedded consumption to family entertainment; and finally Internet shopping where once more the shopper is physically isolated and commodities are reduced to visual and textual symbols. Drawing on a series of online synchronous focus groups this paper seeks to uncover the processes of negotiating and reinterpreting e.shopping websites. The next phase in the development of e.consumption is important as pioneers who have led the way make way for the general population. For many, Internet technology and virtual space is still unfamiliar territory. Whilst cultural meaning is necessarily continually contested, in the case of e.consumption the negotiations could be particularly protracted as renegotiation of meaning takes place.
Ang, I (1985) Watching Dallas. Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination, London, Methuen. Ang, I (1991) Desperately seeking the audience, London, Routledge. Hall, S (2003[1980]) ‘Encoding/decoding’ in Critical readings: media and audiences edited by V Nightingale and K Ross, Berkshire, The Open University Press/McGraw -Hill Education. Morley, D (1980) The ‘Nationwide’ audience, London, British Film Institute. ___________________________________________________________________________ The virtual spaces of telecommunications enthusiasm: the internet, Yahoo! Groups and eBay Hilary Geoghegan Royal Holloway, University of London & Science Museum, London When it was founded in 1989 the Telecommunications Heritage Group was a largely paper-based society (except for the odd phone call of course!). Although the Group held swapmeets, visits and meetings at various locations around the country, the day-to-day running of the Group, the events bulletin, journal and contact between members was usually completed via postal correspondence. Today things have changed considerably – committee meetings are conducted via group emails (documentation has never been better), new members are attracted by, and events are posted on, the Group’s website (www.thg.org.uk), questions and comments are answered and discussed on the Yahoo! Groups THG message board. Interestingly, the Journal remains paper-based and for 70% of THG members is the main form of communication and contact with the Group. The rise of the internet and sites such as Yahoo! Groups and eBay have supposedly ‘revolutionised’ the pursuit of telecommunications enthusiasm. This paper explores this assertion through a consideration of three key spaces of the THG’s virtual world: the Group’s website; their Yahoo! Groups message board; and the on-line auction site eBay. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups with members, as well as participant observation and material from the Group’s message board, this paper will explore the evolving nature of on-line and off-line contact between THG members focusing on the importance of virtual and physical communication; the Group’s perceptions and usage of eBay in particular relation to identifying ‘fake’ and ‘authentic’ objects, recognising sellers false claims to membership of the THG, as well as the way in which eBay acts as a knowledge-base for many enthusiasts; and more generally consider the impact of this virtual world on ideas of enthusiast culture, community and identity. ___________________________________________________________________________ EBay as a labourer of love: A study of collectors, their collections and their relationship with eBay Claire Hunter (2CV:Research [as of August 2005]) and Janice Denegri-Knott (Bournemouth Media School) …you wait till the last few seconds and there’s some swine that’s sat there on the other side of the world and just put a bid in and you think quick quick! Too late! I’ve got up at four o’ clock on the morning before… David, Antique Bedouin Jewellery Collector Collecting has been considered extensively within the disciplines of anthropology (Clifford 1988), sociology (Dannefer 1980, 1981; Olmsted 1991 and Moulin 1987), psychology (Mustenberger 1994), art history (Saisselin 1994), and within a socio-historical context (Hides 1998). However the collector’s passionate dedication to their special objects (Belk 1995) is a phenomenon that has, up until fairly recently, enjoyed limited attention from the field of consumer behaviour. Who collects, what they collect, and why consumers collect have been areas that have received the most attention by academia (Pearce 1995, 1998, Belk and Wallendorf 1988; Belk, Sherry and Wallendorf 1988; Belk, Wallendorf and Sherry 1989; Wallendorf, Belk and Heisley 1988; Belk, Wallendorf, Holbrook and Sherry 1990; Belk and Wallendorf 1992, Belk 1995, Danet and Katriel 1989; 1994). Even less is understood of how virtual places, like Ebay can aid collectors in their labours of love. Despite the fact that Ebay, was conceived as a place for the collector (see Ellis and Haywood, 2004) much research so far has revolved around the bidding process per se (e.g. Standifird, Roelofs, Durham, 2005; de Ruiter and van Heck, 2004; Mathews, 2004; (Heyman, Orhun and Ariely, 2004). In a rare attempt to understand Ebay as a place for the collector, Ellis and Haywood (2004:29) have initiated a research stream around Ebay and the challenge it poses to “the collecting practices, rituals and geographies of collecting we are familiar with from boot sales, swap-meets and collectors fairs”. The exploration of how Ebay may complement or detract from the pleasures felt by collectors and the new practices that in turn may generate, is presented in this paper as a collaborator-labourer to consumers’ collecting. In this way, we seek to understand Ebay as a labourer aiding in the procurement, finding, loving and understanding of desired items. The paper is divided into three key sections. Firstly we theorise an archetypical framework to understand the collecting process from the different types of symbolic relationships collectors have with their collected material, and we conceptualise the factors affecting relationship strength. Second, we turn our attention to how the role of Ebay as a collaborator-labourer procures/ alters the ‘traditional’ collector-collection relationship, and thirdly recommendations are made as to how Ebay can capitalise upon its function as an accomplice in collector’s labours of love. __________________________________________________________________________ “Ephemeral Culture/eBay Culture: Film Collectibles and Fan Investments” Mary Desjardins Dartmouth College Concepts of the ephemeral designate the fleeting aspects of material reality. Whether originating out of the insights of ancient theologies or from continental philosophies responding to the changes wrought by modernity in the late 19th and 20th centuries, ephemera is considered the detritus that represents the exchange, passing, or vanity of civilizations. Yet, in the world of antiques and collecting, ephemera is also a “category” of material objects that are paradoxically throw-aways that are not thrown away. What was once produced to accompany passing events and/or out of materials that were meant to be disposable, the collectible ephemeral object embodies the paradox of the disposable that is not only not disposed of, but which has accrued greater market value and affective resonance over time as a trace of past experiences of commodified, popular culture. One of the major categories of ephemera in the world of professional and amateur buying and selling of collectibles is ephemera connected to Hollywood film production. Many of these are commodity tie-ins for films or stars produced by the pre 1960 Hollywood studio system. With the advent of eBay.com, the most successful auction site on the internet, many of these commodity tie-ins are available for re-circulation as images, and for the successful, bidder, as objects of exchange. The structure of this auction site not only makes the category of ephemeral film-related objects available as imaged and purchasable/winnable collectibles, but is itself based on ephemeral moments of viewing, of ephemeral interaction between sellers and buyers, not to mention on the frenzied time-based activity of making bids during the last seconds of the item’s availability. This paper will focus on the relationship among theoretical concepts of ephemeral material culture, film fan practices around film and star-related commodity tie-ins, and anthropological theories of how objects help ground a sense of selfhood (by investing that self with a degree of objectivity) and provide material evidence of one’s position in a web of social relations. I will also perform a semiotic analysis of a variety of e-Bay auction pages for film-related items to show how buyers and sellers announce their fandom, provide evidence of their fan authority, and engage in possession and/or divestment rituals around film-related material culture. This exploration will illuminate in what ways material objects like film-related commodity tie-ins and virtual market exchange sites like e-Bay contribute to the construction of a popular memory of past film-going and star-worshipping experiences.
Select Bibliography Campbell, Colin. The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Basil Blackwell, 1987). Csikzsentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Meaning of Things (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981). Doss, Erika. Elvis Culture (Univ. of Kansas Press, 1999). Elsner, John and Cardinal, Roger, eds. The Cultures of Collecting (Reaktion Books, 1994). Hebdige, Dick. “Object as Image: The Italian Scooter Cycle,” 1988, reprinted in The Consumer Society Reader eds. Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt (The Free Press, 2000). Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers (Routledge, 1992). Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture (Rutgers, 1996). Morgan, David. Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (Univ. of Calif. Press, 1999). Stacey, Jackie. Star-Gazing (Routledge, 1994). Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Duke Univ., 1993).
CMOA (Combinatorial Multi-attribute Auction): An Alternative to eBay Aloysius Edoh and Patricia. K. Litho University of East London The traditional auction protocols (aka Dutch, English auctions) that Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo use; although considered success stories (Bunnel and luecke 2000), have limited negotiation space. The combinatorial auction (CA) and multi-attribute auction (MAA) (Sandholm 2002, Bichler 2001) have been developed to address these shortages but even these do not allow users to negotiate more than one attribute at a time. As an answer to these limitations a new e-auction protocol has been created to enable agents negotiate on many attributes and combinations of goods simultaneously. This paper therefore shows how the automated hybrid auction was created to reduce computational and bid evaluation complexity based on the Social construction of Technology (SCOT) principles of; (i) the ‘relevant social group’; (ii) their ‘interpretative flexibility”; and “workability”/ functionality of the technology to develop an e-auction system that will be an altenative to E-Bay. SCOT is of the view that technologies emerge out of the process of choice and negotiations between ‘relevant social groups’ (Fox 1996, Webster 1996), in this case the bidders, auctioneers, sellers and auction house. This paper represents a collaboration of two studies in progress; (i) The Combinatorial Multi-attribute Auction as an alternative to eBay (Edoh); and (ii) technological change, ICTs and society: a Constructivist perspective (Litho). Aloysius Edoh is a lecturer at the School of Computing and Technology (SCOT), University of East London and a MPil/PhD Candidate at City University. He has a BSC Electronic Engineering, MSC Information technology, and Mphil in Computing. He has worked in the areas of Software Agents, Distributed Systems, Engineering and Medical Informatics. He is a Member of the British Computer Society and MIEE. ___________________________________________________________________________ Exploring Race in the Digital Age: ‘Blackness for sale’ on eBay Dr Anna Notaro Independent scholar My presentation discusses the case of Keith Townsend Obadike, a multimedia artist based in New Haven, who attempted to sell his blackness on eBay as a net.performance. The project was part of mendi+keith's "black.net.art" actions. The ebay auction started on Aug 8th, 2001 and was scheduled to run for 10 days, however after only four days, eBay closed the auction due to the 'inappropriateness' of the item. After 12 bids, Keith Townsend Obadike’s blackness reached its peak at $152.50. The presentation considers, among others, the various responses the artist began receiving the moment the auction went live. Some of the emails posed quite interesting questions: "What happens once you give away your blackness? Is blackness a self-generating product? Or once you give it, you don't have it anymore?" asked one participant. "Is this blackness gender-specific?" asked another. "What is the value of 'blackness?'" asked yet another. "I imagine that your price will never be met because the value is too great (I imagine this is part of your message, please confirm or deny)." Another participant wondered, "What if sexuality is tossed in too? Are prices slashed? Many congratulated Obadike on the boldness of his auction. But eBay, "The World's Online Marketplace," which itself has come under fire in recent years for letting people bid on pornography and firearms as well as Nazi, Klan and blackface memorabilia, did not share the enthusiasm generated by the 'Blackness for sale' auction and although the auction itself did not violate its hate and violence policy, it was still singled out for scrutiny. The presentation concludes by exploring the possible reasons behind the decision to terminate the auction and whether Obadike’s project’s goals to get people talking and thinking critically about the assumptions they live under and to deal with the intersection of commerce and race were actually met. __________________________________________________________________________ From eBay to eGay: Rendering "Gay Interest" in the Vintage Photography Category Michele White
Tulane University The ontological function of eBay as the actualisation of consumers’ imaginations Janice Denegri-Knott Bournemouth Media School Mike Molesworth Ebay and the culture(s) that it may sustain are generally described as cultures of self-enterprising consumers. The cultural behaviours of Ebay are embroiled with a certain narrative of self-enterprising behaviour. The vistas that are produced constitute the Ebayer as a bargain hunter (Standifird, Roelofs, Durham, 2005; de Ruiter and van Heck, 2004; Mathews, 2004); a competitive bidder (Heyman, Orhun and Ariely, 2004); and at times a consumer-cum producer (Hermetsberger and Pieters, 2004). The values underpinning such cultures are ones that reproduce certain dictums of rationality and utility-maximising behaviour, thus practices are analysed as transactions and Ebay as a more egalitarian marketplace. To that understanding of Ebay we wish to add a different type of culture with a different set of practices and a different type of marketplace. Our evaluation stems from the more qualitative observations surrounding Ebay, not necessary as a place to get a bargain, but a space to marvel, dream and think. It is this spirit that this paper aims to provide alternative conceptual tools to understand the potential of Ebay as a space for ontological reflection through which the navigation and search for desired goods can enhance what Campbell (in Ekstrom and Brembeck, 2004) has referred to as the metaphysical dimension of consumption. As a reflexive space, we conceptualise how Ebay and its ever-changing catalogues of goods enable consumers to cultivate their interest in specific commodities. In this way, Ebay becomes a reflexive, fluid template onto which taste and interests are articulated, making the search for goods ‘good for thinking about oneself’ (Campbell in Ekstrom and Brembeck, 2004; Douglas in Miller, 1995; Csikszentmihalyi, 1999; Csikszentimihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981). In addition to this, we argue that in the active searching, bidding and watching of desirable goods, there is a performative quality that actualises imagined personal or collective pasts, presents and futures. This actualising potential is loosely based on Shields’ (2000) work on performing virtualities and draws from McCracken’s (1998) displacement unity effects theses, Campbell’s (1987) imaginary modern hedonism and Belk’s (e.g Belk, Guliz and Askergaard, 2003) work on desire. Finally we argue that its ontological and actualising dimensions, make of Ebay an attractive consumption location, not only as gateway to ownership for wanted goods; but perhaps more significantly for Ebayers, a means to think and dream about known and unknown commodities and ultimately, about themselves. ___________________________________________________________________________ Transposing auction practice: formalising the informal, globalising the local. Christian Heath Paul Luff Work, Interaction and Technology King's College London It is has been argued that eBay has provided a highly distinctive market place creating the ideal conditions for matching supply and demand that in turn determine price and the legitimate transfer ownership. Yet eBay draws upon, but subtly transforms, a conventional auction system known as the English or Roman model; a model that has underpinned the sale of a range of goods of ‘uncertain value’ for many centuries. Despite the extraordinary success of eBay, we have little understanding of the ways in which competition is created, sustained, and legitimised within these electronic transactions and how participation in eBay reflects behaviour in more conventional auctions. In this paper, we draw upon a wide-ranging study of auctions of fine art, antiques and object d’art to consider the ways in which eBay and the people who use it have developed procedures, practices and strategies to manage competition, and to legitimately escalate price and secure the transfer of ownership. The paper is based upon the analysis of a selected number of transactions conducted on Ebay and a substantial corpus of video recordings, augmented by field studies, of auctions of fine art, antiques and objet d’art gathered in the UK and abroad. The paper begins by delineating a range of problems and issues that arise in conventional, co-located auctions and discusses the ways in which these are resolved in and through an organisation that structures the interaction between potential buyers and legitimises the escalation of price to enable a fair and accountable value to be achieved. We discuss for example the ways in which auctioneers establish and sustain competition and how potential buyers are selectively incorporated into the bidding process. We consider the ways in which incremental scales are established and transformed to serve a variety of contingent problems. We address the ways in which auctioneers display demand and reveal the authenticity of bids, thereby legitimise the escalation of price and the transfer of ownership. The paper then contrasts this highly contingent, yet systematic interactional organisation with the institutional arrangements found on eBay. We consider the ways in which eBay resolves various problems and issues through the transformation of a conventional auction model an formalisation of various tacit practices and procedures. So for example we consider the ways in which bids and structured and counter-posed, how demand and competition is established and displayed, the ways in which the authenticity of bids is achieved, and how the legitimacy of price and exchange is accomplished. We also consider the strategies used by buyers and actions such as sniping and the like and show how these strategies reflect a range of tricks and techniques that are used by bidders in conventional auctions. We also consider the ways in which problems of integrity and security that arise on eBay such as shill bidding, bid-siphoning and bid shielding, reflect difficulties that arise in conventional auctions; difficulties that are resolved by a range of tacit, socio-interactional practices employed by auctioneers and others including buyers and saleroom assistants. More generally the paper will discuss the ways in which more traditional auction houses and the trade are responding to eBay. In particular, we will consider how auction houses are increasingly exploiting the internet and eBay to publicise sales and to secure commission bids for conventional co-located auctions. We will also consider the opportunities for and experiments in integrating internet bidding into live auctions and the problems and issues that arise. The presentation will include extracts of video-recordings of live auctions as well selected extracts drawn from sales on eBay. ______________________________________________________________________________
" User courses and trust building on eBay" ________________________________________________________________________________ The Unbearable Lightness of eBay Alan Metcalfe, University of Sheffield Nicky Gregson, University of Sheffield Louise Crewe, University of Nottingham eBay is widely regarded in the popular media as representing and realising an exciting new world of opportunities: opportunities for bargain-hunters, for entrepreneurs, for collectors and for communities. Drawing on work undertaken as part of a project on ‘The disposal and ridding of things’, we find that such notions are common amongst our research participants, who see eBay as one potential route amongst many for, variously, getting rid of junk, finding a good home for things, realising the ‘true’ value of something and, indeed, making money. Similarly, looking at academic studies of eBay we find that emphasis has been placed on eBay as a virtual market, where trust, reputation and strategies count in the realisation of the price paid and the way in which the site works. A market which seemingly offers a chance to create a true ‘free market’ by bringing disparate and distant commodities, buyers and sellers together in ways that were hitherto impossible. What is of interest is how both sets of discourses focus upon the ‘lightness’ of eBay: its virtuality, its immateriality and its capacity to be a source for and route of all things. Yet when we talk to people involved in selling things through eBay we find a ‘weightiness’ returning. Materiality, embodiment and geography become important factors in deciding what to attempt to sell through this conduit and how. The commodity matters when it has to be wrapped and despatched, embodiment becomes important in the time and effort taken to photograph and describe the item, while geography is central in determining whether to even bother auctioning certain items, such as furniture, consumer electronics, and white goods as these often require collection, and hence proximity. Drawing upon our research we find that while at times eBay is spoken about in terms of its lightness, people inevitably talk about the difficulty of eBay, the boredom and weariness involved, such that even the most committed shift relatively little in comparison to their intentions. Indeed, the weight of eBay is brought home by the fact that so much stuff simply hangs around rooms, garages, and cupboards waiting. To understand eBay one must go beyond its lightness and feel its weight.
_________________________________________________________________________________ The characteristics, motivations and experiences of eBay entrepreneurs – an exploratory study Lyndsey Miles (presenter) and Marilyn Davidson Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester It is estimated that at least ten thousand people in the UK are now making a living by selling goods via eBay (Rowan, 2005) and yet, whilst a small body of literature exists on other eBay-related topics (Gilkeson and Reynolds, 2003; Marcoux, 2003; Anderson, Friedman, Milam and Singh, 2004), there has been no published research to date concerning these eBay entrepreneurs. The exponential growth of this form of self-employment in recent years indicates that it fulfils the occupational needs of many individuals, needs which may relate to flexible hours and location or greater anonymity or independence. However, the absence of research in this area makes these suggestions purely speculative, and this is a situation which needs to be remedied. eBay presents an opportunity for entrepreneurship without the traditional financial and logistical barriers, and so a greater understanding of this form of work is likely to be of interest to both individuals and work policy analysts, particularly those considering options for unemployed or disadvantaged groups (DWP, 2002). This paper details the first study which has aimed to explore and describe the eBay entrepreneur population from the perspective of occupational psychology, using semi-structured online interviews with forty individuals who stated that their main income was generated from selling goods on eBay. The focus was placed upon the participants’ motivations, work backgrounds and demographics, the nature of their work and their experiences and attitudes towards it, and the practical and psychological difficulties they have encountered as an eBay entrepreneur. The paper examines the themes that were drawn from the interview transcripts and sets them against the backdrop of existing research in traditional entrepreneurship (e.g. (Gartner, 1985), homeworking (Felstead and Jewson, 2000) and diversity (Fielden and Davidson, 2004). The relevance of the findings for individuals and for employment policy are also explored. ____________________________________________________________________________________________ The Transformation of the Perfect MarketKeyvan Kashkooli Department of Sociology, University of California Berkeley This paper addresses why and how eBay USA evolved from a loosely organized and minimally structured marketplace, the “perfect market,” into a complex set of institutions governing one of the largest online retail sites in the world. Theoretically, this paper examines how rules of exchange, trust, conceptions of fairness in markets, and social organizations shape market structure and actor participation. Empirical work examines the relationship between the above concepts and features of market structure including the increase in fixed price and new item sales, the size and types of eBay sellers, the number of transactions by type of seller, and the degree to which eBay sellers are existing online or brick & mortar stores. eBay, the website, is an online marketplace that hosts a large number of distinct markets. As such, many of the features on the site and the user agreements comprise a set of institutions that facilitate exchange. eBay, the firm, has actively sought to create new markets (i.e. new categories within eBay) in order to generate more revenue for the company. Consequently, eBay progressed from a marketplace of small individual sellers primarily posting collectibles in an auction format into a marketplace that hosted markets in larger, more expensive items such as cars and computers and composed of corporate sellers such as Sun Microsystems, IBM, Sears, Best Buy. This transformation produced changes in market structure, format, and rules. For example, more than half of the listings on eBay Motors are posted by professional dealers and there are an increasing percentage of fixed-price sales. A sociological analysis of eBay suggests that institutions, culture, and rules (in addition to competition) influence market growth. Market formation—including rules of exchange and the definition of fair competition—is a political process. The relationship between dominant and challenger sellers, between sellers and buyers, and between eBay users and the company is contested and continuously negotiated. By examining market formation as a political process, the sociological approach raises the question of how actors—individuals, organizations, associations, etc.—are constituted in markets. The case of eBay in the United States demonstrates that markets re socially constructed and locally contingent. ____________________________________________________________________________________ eBay, self-presentation and ‘user authority’ Dan Laughey Leeds Metropolitan University This paper will attempt to outline the most significant implications posed by eBay to traditional relationships between producers and consumers. In several respects eBay provides greater seller-buyer democracy and consumer authority that any previous marketplace. Anyone with a few basic technologies and enough – relatively low – start-up capital can ‘do business’ on eBay and perhaps fan the first flames of entrepreneurial endeavour. Being a successful eBayer, though, depends on positive feedback received based on the quality of your product and service, as opposed to the quality of your technological expertise or credit history. Add to this the idea that the end-price from an auction item constitutes its genuine ‘market value’ (i.e. based on level of bidder demand) and the more intriguing concept of a ‘global marketplace’ where the value of goods transcends national economies, and what is in evidence appears to be a radically empowering phenomenon that seriously threatens the power hierarchies of offline retail sectors. I intend to apply theories of ‘self-presentation’ (Goffman 1969) and ‘consumer authority’ (Abercrombie 1994) to the practices of eBay users. My findings are not derived from any specific methodological framework but rather originate from my own experiences as an eBay seller. During these times of large personal debts and modest academic salaries, my partner and I sell items on eBay as an additional source of income. We have been registered sellers for over two years and have come to the opinion that eBay has provided a very important means of ‘getting by. We are under no illusions about the financial limitations that eBay, the Inland Revenue and other institutions pose. Nevertheless, the new forms of mediated interaction opened up by eBay seem to accommodate greater scope for what I will call ‘user authority’ than have ever existed previously. Buyers and sellers are locked in intimate, mutually dependent relations with each other in the paradoxically vast, anonymous context of cyberspace. Both groups possess certain advantages (postage costs, payment methods) but are also subject to the same restrictions and regulations. For example, no one without the right bank account can share in the so-called ‘inclusiveness’ of the eBay marketplace. I will explore issues of accessibility and involvement in an attempt to assess the capacity for creative self-presentation and user authority on eBay.
References Abercrombie, N. (1994) ‘Authority and Consumer Society’ in R. Keat, N. Whiteley and N. Abercrombie (eds.) The Authority of the Consumer (London: Routledge) pp. 43-57. Goffman, E. (1969) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (first published 1959) (Harmondsworth: Penguin). ___________________________________________________________________________
Frank
Cartledge Keeping up with the Jones’ the eBay way… (what they didn’t mean to tell you). We live in an age where the surface of design carries with it a raft of lifestyle signifiers. Both seller and buyer on eBay tacitly display their economic and cultural capital in the choices they make within the environs of the auction site. What this paper proposes is a discussion of those signs and objects that lie within the images used to record the goods for sale within two sections on e-bay: ‘antiques and art’ and ‘pottery and glass’. Whilst the listed objects signify and construct a material history with connotations of collecting and display, I am interested in exploring those messages and meanings which either consciously or unconsciously lie within the space of the photographic frame. We as a public, are being invited into peoples homes on an unprecedented level. We can stare through their windows beyond the ornaments and bric-a-brac out to sea in Alaska or a hillside in Portugal. The ‘everyday’ nature of this display and the consequent juxtaposition of commerce and domesticity raise interesting questions as to how we as consumers and sellers construct meaning from these images.
Let’s Get Physical – eBay and the geographies of the real ‘Scorpion Tank 1 Careful owner (barr the military). New engin, new tracks, up and running in full working order, de-activated gun. Can be driven on road - no MOT required. Ultimate toy! No time wasters please. Sold as seen. Contact 07837 ****** Will arrange for local pickup only (no postage).’ The increasing popularity of eBay as a forum for the buying and selling of goods offers up interesting analysis in the framing of our relationship to material culture and its expression within a two-dimensional representation. Unlike the utopic visions of many commentators in the 1990’s who saw space and the role of distance as irrelevant in an age of pure information flow, Ebay offers us a model of how changes in ‘virtual’ communication can articulate a real change in spatial relations. From the fictive space in which an object ‘lives’ on screen, to its accompanying textual description which articulates that which cannot be ‘seen’, to the articles delivery/ removal, each stage significantly shifts our perception and relation from the imaginary to the real and (perhaps) back again. Whilst ‘objects’ may appear on eBay as ‘pure’ information, it is quite clear that once that information has been purchased, goods have to be collected or delivered. Though we see the representation of objects through a 21” inch screen which homogenizes all classes of goods as transferable in their size and value, their materiality exerts hierarchies of distribution which relate back to the old economic orders of transportation; value, size and weight. Thus all the old mechanistic modes of our industrial infrastructure creak back into action. This paper argues that the possibilities of communication technologies and the effect they exert, is never at the exclusion of previous modes of communication as they contain, by proxy, those modes within them. Furthermore, in a system such as eBay, the imposition of real time space and location; economically, politically and culturally, exerts a profound effect on the shaping of that site’s content. |