The electronic auction (eAuction) is an e-business between auctioneers and bidders, which takes place on an electronic marketplace. It is an electronic commerce which occurs business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), or consumer-to-consumer (C2C).
The auctioneer offers his goods, commodities or services on an auction side on the internet. Interested parties can submit their bid for the product to be auctioned in certain specified periods. The auction is transparent, all interested parties are allowed to participate the auction in a timely manner.
The two major types of the electronic auction are forward auction in which several buyers bid for one seller's goods and reverse auction in which several sellers bid for one buyer's order.
Forward auctions take the form of a single seller offering an item for sale, with buyers competing to secure the item by bidding the price upward . Forward auctions are far-better understood by the public at large than reverse auctions as to how they operate, due primarily to the fact that they are widely used at the consumer level. In fact, forward auctions underlie everything from eBay and other online auction sites to auctions of art, wine, and other collectibles. They are also widely used for auctioning everything from autos, real estate, machinery, etc., where the goal is for the seller to receive the most money possible for the item being offered at auction. Thus, a forward auction should be utilized for sales of goods and services of all types, whether conducted online, offline, or a hybrid of the two.
