Case Study: Like many college students, Laura likes jewelry and she has found a new way to shop for it from her dorm room-online auctions, especially eBay. In checking eBays listings recently, she found the following: 8 14 kt gold plated bracelet-gold plated with 20mils of 14kt gold. Thats very thick as most chains have only 2-3 mils of gold plating. Chains are not easy to find with this much gold, but they are sold in higher end stores for $49.95 or more. The chain is a 6 mm flat link style and is heavynot a cheap lite weight. That sounded good, so she looked at the starting price$9.95-and how many people had bid on the bracelet0. There were over 5 days left on the auction. Hm-m-m, she thought. Its certainly cheap enough and the description sounds good. Lets see the picture. When she scrolled to the picture, she thought the bracelet looked very much like one that a girl on her
hall owned and which she he had often admired.
Even though, it seemed like a good deal, Laura was concerned that no one had bid on it. Maybe not many people have looked at it she argued with herself. Its not been on auction very long. When she checked the counter, however, she found that 37 people had viewed this auction. I wonder if theres something else wrong, she mused. Maybe its the seller. When she checked the sellers feedback, she found that the seller had received 11 positive comments in the last 7 days, 26 in the last month and 110 in the last 6 months. There were, however, 3 neutral comments in the last 6 months and 1 negative. Well, this seller seems to be doing better as there are no negative or neutral comments in the last month, thought Laura. Because its only $9.95, I might as well bid and see what happens. If the price gets too high, I can always drop out.