Online auctions are fast gaining popularity in today's electronic commerce.Relative to offline auctions, there is a greater degree of multiple bidding andlate bidding in online auctions, an empirical finding by some recent research.These two behaviors (multiple bidding and late bidding) are of ``strategic''importance to online auctions and hence important to investigate. In thisarticle we empirically measure the distribution of bid timings and the extentof multiple bidding in a large set of online auctions, using bidder experienceas a mediating variable. We use data from the popular auction site\url{www.eBay.com} to investigate more than 10,000 auctions from 15 consumerproduct categories. We estimate the distribution of late bidding and multiplebidding, which allows us to place these product categories along a continuum ofthese metrics (the extent of late bidding and the extent of multiple bidding).Interestingly, the results of the analysis distinguish most of the productcategories from one another with respect to these metrics, implying thatproduct categories, after controlling for bidder experience, differ in theextent of multiple bidding and late bidding observed in them. We also find anonmonotonic impact of bidder experience on the timing of bid placements.Experienced bidders are ``more'' active either toward the close of auction ortoward the start of auction. The impact of experience on the extent of multiplebidding, though, is monotonic across the auction interval; more experiencedbidders tend to indulge ``less'' in multiple bidding.
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