Dimoka, Hong, & Pavlou/Product Uncertainty in Online Markets

eBay Motors is the largest automotive site on the Internet with an annual revenue of more than $21 billion for 2009 and a sell-through rate of about 20 percent. eBay Motors lists over 100,000 cars for sale, and gets over 1 million visits from buyers each month. The listing fee for a car is $40, which allows the seller to list a car using software tools available from eBay Motors. Figure A1 shows are the basic components of a typical used car listing on eBay Motors. Online Product Descriptions Sellers can provide online product descriptions for their car listings using text, pictures, and multimedia (Figure A2). Sellers can provide textual descriptions of the car’s characteristics, history, and prior usage; post pictures; and employ listing tools provided by eBay, such as professional templates, description builders, and photo hosting and management. Sellers can even employ companies, such as CARad (www.carad.com) and CompleteAuto (www.completeauto.com), to help them further enhance their online car descriptions