Temporal Analysis of Seller Profiles in Electronic Markets

In the last decade, there has been an explosion of online commercial activity enabled by World Wide Web (WWW). These days, many consumers are less attracted to online auctions, preferring to buy merchandise quickly using fixed price negotiations. This work is part of a research to characterize and analyze selling practices in a fixed-price e-market. An important part of this research is to evaluate qualitatively how the e-market changes through time, considering the seller profiles and their negotiations and the impact of them in terms of outcomes, such as price and transaction. We use real data from TodaOferta, a large Brazilian marketplace. In terms of transactions, we measure a variation from 10 to 15% of unsatisfaction, showing that TodaOferta has a considerable credibility. The retailers represent around 40 to 45% of e-market transactions share. There is also a significant participation of newcomers in the e-market. The proposed methodology and the results of this work can be applied in the design of new personalization and recommendation techniques for e-market traders.