A Look at Dubli's Reverse Auctions

We are all familiar with the typical Auction that takesincluding Apple. As a matter of fact, if you were to
place at Sotheby's or any well established auctionpurchase it at the starting price and you found it for a
house. A group of people interested in certain workslower price anywhere online within the next two
of art for example, gather at the auction house and asweeks. DubLi will pay you the difference plus 10% of
each item, in this case each painting or sculpture goesthe difference.
up for bid, the bidders begin to place bids on the itemsThe next thing you will notice is that you can't see the
that are being auctioned off. The perceived value of"Current Price". It is grayed out - here is where the
the particular piece, in conjunction with the desire of theDubLi Credits come into play. If you want to see the
bidders to add the item to their collect, etc continues tocurrent price you must click on the green "Show Price"
drive the price up until no one is willing to bid any higherbutton. Each time you click on the show price button it
and last highest bid gets to buy the item at the lastcost you ONE dubli credit, or 80cents. Every time a
price bid.consumer clicks on the show price button, it lowers the
In the case of a reverse auction such as those thatprice of the product by 25cents. For example, if after
are gaining popularity at DubLi.com, the bidders orclicking the show price button the current price of the
participants actually drive the price down rather thannano was now at $95 and the start price was $174.00.
up. How the mechanism works in a reverse auction isThat means the price dropped $79, and if you divide
very interesting and will be the center piece of thisthe $79 by 25 cents (remember the price drops
article. In the case of the DubLi Reverse Auctions, the25cents every time the price is checked), that tells you
mechanism that allows the price to be driven down isthe price has been checked 316 times.
very simple, yet very ingenious.The flip side of that is the consumer/you spent
The first thing that draws consumers to the auctions is80cents and saved, in this case, $79. That is a great
that all the products are brand new, brand name anddeal for you the consumer. Even if you had only
fully warranted from companies like LG, Panasonic,saved $40, I think you would agree it was well worth
Apple, Sony, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Audi, Gucci, Louisspending the 80cents.
Vuitton and many more. Add to this the potential ofAt this point you now have a decision to make. You
purchasing these brand names at very significantcan decide this is a GREAT price and you can click
discounts; sometimes as much as 95% off the retailthe "BUY NOW" button and you can purchase the
price and you have the formula for creating someNano for $95. However, you can't sit and think about it
very exciting buying circumstances. The kind of buyingtoo long, because if someone else, anywhere in North
circumstances that people love to talk about. In otherAmerica, clicks on the "SHOW PRICE" button before
words, the auctions create perhaps the mostyou click on buy now, you will loose the ability to
significant viral marketing tool online today.purchase the Nano and will have to click the show
Anyone can participate in a DubLi Reverse Auction;price again in order to grab it.
the only requirement is that they must have a bank ofYou begin to see that the auctions not only offer the
DubLi Credits, with each credit costing 80cents. Theconsumer the "POTENTIAL" to purchase products at
consumer then finds a product in any one of the 3very significant savings, but they also create a lot of
reverse auctions; the Express Auction, the Zeroexcitement and a lot of buzz online. You can imagine
Auction or the Unique Bid Auction. The credits play ahow fast it spreads online as consumers are posting
different role in each of the three auctions.their successes on Facebook, twitter, etc. And the
The Express Auction: In the express auction themore people that come into the auctions, the faster
consumer basically buys when he or she thinks thethe prices drop; the faster prices drop the more people
price is right. For example, if you were to pick out ancome into the auctions. It's like pouring gasoline onto a
Apple iPod Nano, you would click on the image of thefire.
nano which would bring it to the top of the page,As an example, on June 27th 2009, David Duncan of
allowing you to see a complete product descriptionOrlando, Florida bought a brand new C300 Mercedes
before you had to spend a credit. The first thing youBenz for $8,000.50. The retail value of the car is listed
will notice is that the "Starting Price" is guaranteed byat $37,000. David can't help himself and he is telling
DubLi to be the lowest retail price you can findeveryone he has every met what a great deal he got
anywhere online of all the major online retailers,at DubLi's Reverse Auctions.