Open Bid Auctions
(Open Bid Proxy Auction & Open Bid Auction)
In the Open Bid Auction participants are able to bid for a certain amount of time and with different levels of information on their performance.The Open Bid Proxy Auction as an English second-price auction used by eBay for example.
Configuration Possibilities
In the Auction Options tab, all parameters related to the auction functionalities can be defined.
The Auction Direction decides, whether the price is going up or down with each bid. In a Forward Auction the price is going up, in a Reverse Auction the price is going down.
Similar to the Clock Auction, the Grouping of the experiment participants can be decided between Group Everyone, Group by Grouping or Group by Variable (PSL). Group Everyone results in all participants in the experiment bidding in the same auction. All of them will see the same current price and the timer will be the same as well. There will be one winner only. Group by Grouping on the other hand is dependent on how many groups are participating in the experiment. Each group will have a separate auction. The last option Group by Variable (PSL) is the most flexible. Before the Clock Auction Steptype, a Grouping Variable (Name / PSL) needs to be specified for every participant. The context of the variable has to be PSL. The name of the specified variable has to be entered here in the Auction Options.
A crucial difference between these auction types is the level of information. For the Open Bid Auction the Bidder Information is configurable. Participants can have Full Price Information, Best Price, Best Price and Rank, Rank Only or Sealed Bid. Based on the selected information the auction functionality changes. For the first four options, the functionality is the same. Participants are able to bid more than once and get feedback based on the amount of information they have. For a Sealed Bid auction participants are only able to enter a bid once and will finish the auction by submitting a bid, as they do not have any further information besides the opening bid.
In addition for the Open Bid Auction there is an option for the Winner Selection. The winner can either be selected automatically by the Best Price or selected based on other factors within the experiment by using the Sellers Choice option.
Further it is possible to display the number of participants currently participating in the auction by selecting the Display number of participants checkbox.
As automated biddings are only existing in the Open Bid Proxy Auction it is possible to Display automated biddings there. The automated biddings will be part of the biddings table and highlighted in lighter gray.
A Bid Taker can be specified as well. This participant will not participate in the auction actively. He does have all the necessary information during the time of the auction and can decide on the winner after the auction finished. The Bid Taker option currently only works for the Group by Grouping setup and will be extended in the future.
The Hard Close Time (in seconds) defines the inital time displayed for the auction. If the Soft Close Time (in seconds) is set to zero, the Hard Close Time solely defines the duration of the auction. The Soft Close Time represents the last seconds before the auction ends. Whenever a bid is submitted during that time, the auction is extended by the number of seconds defined at Extend Time (in seconds).
The Minimum Bid Increment is the minimum amount a bid needs to be higher (or lower) than the current best price. The starting value for an auction is specified through the Opening Bid.
Lastly the Font Size Bid (in px) represents the size of the text displayed for the current auction price.
View (Open Bid Proxy Auction)
View (Open Bid Auction)
