<p>This thesis compares the two different version of public franchise bidding for awarding 3G licenses used in Sweden and the UK, respectively a beauty contest and an auction. The fact is that the Swedish beauty contest has failed to tackle many of the problems discussed in connection with public franchise bidding in an effective way. Sweden has first of all had problems with enforcing the ambitious coverage criteria. The UK has on the other hand succeeded in tackling the problems and raised governmental revenue of £22.5bn through the auction.</p><p>The conclusion is that this thesis confirms the existing literatures’ critique of the Swedish beauty contest. However, this thesis also provides a new perspective to the existing literature. The main conclusion is that the auction has locked the prices at a high level and externalised negative price and investments effects through the international operators’ behaviour onto consumers in other countries.</p>

This thesis compares the two different version of public franchise bidding for awarding 3G licenses used in Sweden and the UK, respectively a beauty contest and an auction. The fact is that the Swedish beauty contest has failed to tackle many of the problems discussed in connection with public franchise bidding in an effective way. Sweden has first of all had problems with enforcing the ambitious coverage criteria. The UK has on the other hand succeeded in tackling the problems and raised governmental revenue of £22.5bn through the auction. The conclusion is that this thesis confirms the existing literatures’ critique of the Swedish beauty contest. However, this thesis also provides a new perspective to the existing literature. The main conclusion is that the auction has locked the prices at a high level and externalised negative price and investments effects through the international operators’ behaviour onto consumers in other countries.

Course:        Bachelor Thesis in Business Administration, 15 ECTS   Topic:          The Impact of Strategic Purchasing on an Organization’s Profitability                      A Case Study of Ghana Telecom Company                                                     Supervisor:     Mats Viimne Background:  The purchasing function contributes directly to the operating results and                        profitability of an organization. It has been argued out that, the fact that                        purchasing is responsible for spending more than 60 percent of an organization’s                            sales dollars highlights the profit-enhancing potentials of the purchasing on an                        organization.                                     Problem:       How can strategic purchasing affect the profitability of an organization?   Purpose:       The purpose of this research is to describe how strategic purchasing impact on                       the profitability of Ghana Telecom Company.       Method:      The author collected both primary and secondary data in order to fulfill the                       purpose of the paper; the primary data was gathered directly from relevant sources                     in Ghana Telecom Company, through telephone and email interviews. The                     secondary data was obtained from indirect sources, such as textbooks, articles, and                     websites. The method used can be described as a qualitative.   Conclusion: An organization’s purchasing strategy is becoming recognized as a strategic weapon                     equal in importance to its marketing, conversion and finance strategies as pointed                      out by Dobler et al. Ghana Telecom Company’s strategic approach to buying include                     multiple sourcing, short-term contracting and competitive bidding as a measure                     towards increasing its profitability by being able to source at the lowest cost, and                     having other sourcing alternatives, which leads to cost reduction.

This paper explores the determinants of the number of bidders and final price of 1900s oil paintings auctioned by resellers or dealers on eBay art auctions. We find that starting price has negative effect on bidder’s decision whether to enter the auctions or not while seller reputation variables such as seller´s feedback, being top rate seller has a positive effect. Furthermore, auction theory is introduced to study the bidder´s behavior through auction characteristics and final price. We find that, interestingly, the seller´s reputation variables have no significant effect to the final price and the number of bidders has positive effect toward final price of art work. This evidence means that art auctions on eBay has a private value auctions characteristic. However, some specific characteristics of online auctions, which are the last minute bidding and the presence of experienced bidders, significantly affect the final price. Being an experienced winner or using last minute bidding as a strategy substantially pay more than inexperienced winners or winners who do not use last minute bidding in auctioned painting. This could result from different preference of bidders toward auctioned painting or information on which each bidder is holding.

This paper investigates whether the bidding induces the occurrence of herding, and analyses the effects of behavioral factors, information, and fundamental characteristics of real estate on the performance of bank auction. Our sample is from July 2001 to January 2003, the real estate that intermediaries sold was held by bank in Taiwan, including 363 the real estate and the price of bidding under bank auction. We obtain some interesting implication. First of all, we find that herding of bidding not only could explain premium but also discount. After controlling informational factors and fundamental characteristics of real estate, it could not weaken the significance of herding of bidding. For the strategy of the reserve price by the vendor, the higher discount is to encourage bidding actively, which is consistent with the view of Welch (1992). Secondly, we find bidders could easily reduce search cost by observing the bidding of competitors under bank auction, and herding of bidding on the auction process could enhance efficiency of information aggregation. Furthermore, herding of bidding makes the performance of auction different between court and bank. Finally, we overcome the selective bias and find the real estate held by bank had poor performance under court auction; however, the real estate held by court had better performance under bank auction. This implies the mechanism of court auction should be transformed into the open-outcry bidding in order to achieve effective recovery of debt and the policy of reducing losses. Robustness analysis of this study, first of all, for the herd measure that not isolated from informational factors, we find the insignificant effect of behavioral factors on the performance of English mechanism, and auction premium and discount are dominated by the informational factors. Secondly, the choice of the methods about true value of real estate may affect the conditional probability of the herd measure, and make inconsistent conclusions that the effect of behavioral factors on the performance of English mechanism. Whether we choose cluster analysis or regression method to obtain the true value of real estate, the conclusion that the effect of behavioral factors on the performance of English mechanism could be supported, and those can not switch the results of the minimum sum method. Thus, the conclusion that behavioral factors influence the performance of the auction is full of evidences.

My dissertation discusses a mechanism that thwarts sniping and improves efficiency in ascending Internet auctions with fixed ending times, specifically eBay. The first research chapter proposes a design of the bidding mechanism and the second chapter tests the effectiveness of the mechanism in a controlled environment. In addition, it presents an innovative theoretical representation of the eBay bidding environment. The first chapter investigates theoretically whether sellers can improve their profits in eBay-like auctions via the implementation of bidder credits. The analysis predicts that providing a credit, similar to a coupon or discount, for early bidding can thwart sniping and increase seller profit. The paper formulates and analyzes a multi-stage auction model with independently and identically distributed private values, where bidders place proxy bids. I show that sniping can emerge as a Bayesian-Nash equilibrium strategy so long as late bids run the risk of not being successfully received by the auctioneer; extending the prior work of Ockenfels and Roth. This equilibrium is inefficient and yields the worst outcome for sellers. The proposed credit mechanism awards a single early bidder a reduction, equal to the value of the credit, in the final price if he wins the auction. The optimal credit satisfies two necessary conditions; first, it increases seller ex-ante profit and second, it incentivizes bidders to deviate from the sniping equilibrium. Relative to the surplus generated by the sniping equilibrium, implementing the credit increases seller surplus and improves welfare. The second chapter experimentally investigates the effectiveness of the credit mechanism. In particular, it compares bidding strategies, seller profit, and overall efficiency in auction environments similar to eBay with and without credit incentives. I observe a significant decline in the frequency of sniping when subjects have the opportunity to receive the credit. The credit also improves auction efficiency primary because subjects overbid in auctions with the credit regardless of which subject has the credit. A within-subjects design allows me to directly compare differences across treatments conditional on the subjects being snipers. Auctions with snipers yield significantly lower profits to sellers because non-sniping rivals are bidding less aggressively when competing against a sniper.

This thesis provides a discussion on some analytical and empirical models of online auctions. The objective is to provide an alternative framework for analyzing online auctions, and to characterize the distribution of intermediate prices. Chapter 1 provides a mathematical formulation of the eBay auction format and background to the data used in the empirical analysis. Chapter 2 analyzes policies for optimally disposing inventory using online auctions. It is assumed a seller has a fixed number of items to sell using a sequence of, possibly overlapping, single-item auctions. The decision the seller must make is when to start each auction. The decision involves a trade-off between a holding cost for each period an item remains unsold, and a cannibalization effect among competing auctions. Consequently the seller must trade-off the expected marginal gain for the ongoing auctions with the expected marginal cost of the unreleased items by further deferring their release. The problem is formulated as a discrete time Markov Decision Problem. Conditions are derived to ensure that the optimal release policy is a control limit policy in the current price of the ongoing auctions. Chapter 2 focuses on the two item case which has sufficient complexity to raise challenging questions. An underlying assumption in Chapter 2 is that the auction dynamics can be captured by a set of transition probabilities. Chapter 3 shows with two fixed bidding strategies how the transition probabilities can be derived for a given auction format and bidder arrival process. The two specific bidding strategies analyzed are when bidders bid: 1) a minimal increment, and 2) their true valuation. Chapters 4 and 5 provides empirical analyzes of 4,000 eBay auctions conducted by Dell. Chapter 4 provides a statistical model where over discrete time periods, prices of online auctions follow a zero-inflated gamma distribution. Chapter 5 provides an analysis of the 44,000 bids placed in the auctions, based on bids following a gamma distribution. Both models presented in Chapters 4 and 5 are based on conditional probabilities given the price and elapsed time of an auction, and certain parameters of the competing auctions. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis with a discussion of the main results and possible extensions.

Reverse Auction Bidding (RAB) is a recently developed procurement method that can be used by the construction industry. The technique is different from a traditional auction system, since RAB system uses a bidding activity method that is completed anonymously by pre-qualified bidders during a fixed auction time. The basic premise for the auction is that the current best auction price is available for viewing during the whole auction process by both bidders and owner. The apparent incentive is for noncompetitive bidders to lower the price. There are however controlling factor beyond the reach of owners, such as market demand, lending restrictions, stakeholder expectations and risk tolerance levels, that impact on price levels. However, owners continue to attempt to drive down prices using this technique. A study into the mechanics of RAB was launched at Texas A&M University in 2004. This ongoing study of RAB continues to this time with eighteen case studies. This nineteenth study looks at the time series bid data from some of the prior work. Nine case studies were selected from the previous case studies. These nine studies provided untainted data with 6674 RAB bid arrivals by prior investigator actions. This study concerns the statistical process of bid arrivals with time. The hypothesis to be tested is that the RAB bid arrivals timing can be modeled with a statistical process. The analysis reviewed the fit for several types of distribution, including Gaussian and Poissionian. The best fit was modeled by non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The first conclusion from the analysis is that RAB bid arrivals follows a Poisson process, termed non-homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP). The second conclusion is that the controlling Poissionian process has a square root factor. The NHPP model for RAB provides a tool for future studies of RAB in real time. Future work is suggested on the inter-time periods for the bidding.

Crew planning is a complex optimization problem that usually is divided into two separate parts, pairing and rostering. In the rostering process crewmembers are assigned a personal roster, a schedule, for the next coming time period. In order for the crew to have an influence on their roster, SAS have implemented a Preferential Bidding System (PBS) where the crew has the ability to express their wishes regarding their roster, formulated as bids. Generally there is an outspoken dissatisfaction among the crew about PBS and how it works and therefore the questions were raised of how the system could be more transparent and how the bid fulfillment could be communicated both internally and externally. The performed analysis was made with regard to bidding pattern and bid fulfillment and was both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative part consisted of a thorough review of historic data (delimited to only four months) and a questionnaire, targeting the whole crew collective, was set up as a complementary qualitative analysis. In this thesis the work and result is presented. The result of the analysis shows that satisfaction felt by the crew cannot be directly compared to bid fulfillment as it is measured today. The major aspects of improving the PBS should include a simplification regarding mainly bid types, but also actions in order to increase the transparency of the system and awareness. The recommendation to SAS is to present statistics to crew for each bid type regarding number of placed bids, number of possible fulfillments and how much that is fulfilled thus visualizing the possibility to get a bid fulfilled. A revised range of bid types have also been recommended along with a few minor changes.

Reverse Auction Bidding is a recently developed auction method. In this form of bidding process, the roles of the bidders and the owner are interchanged in terms of the form of the economic transaction. The owner's objective is to drive the unit rates down and the bidder's objective is to maintain an acceptable profit level. A study into Reverse Auction Bidding commenced at Texas A&M University in 2004 and continues to this time, with this the eighteenth study in the series. This study is the second multi-group study in the research. In this study, a multiple group comparison was made between different numbers of bidders, with Games One, Two and Three having three, four and ten bidders respectively. All participants were faculty and students from the Department of Construction Science. The critical requirement for the participants is that they should have no prior experience using the Reverse Auction Bidding system. The eighteen studies have concentrated on new players, with future studies planned for repeat participants. A number of the recent case studies have shown personality has an impact on the performance of the bidders. However, this work was not controlled for personality, as the research objective was to determine the impact of a different number of bidders in a game. The Keirsey Temperament Sorter test was completed by all participants so that the results could be understood in terms of personality impact on the level of return to each participant. The results showed the number of bidders has a significant impact on the individual returns confirming the earlier work on varying the number of bidders. An increase in the number of bidders was shown to lead to a more competitive economic environment, which given usual economic circumstances lead to a reduction in the number of firms interested in bidding, for the self-evident economic reasons. This work points to the need to investigate a bidding group size of five or six, which is likely to be the self-constrained upper limit in a real economic system. Some interesting observations on the personality types suggest that further work is required in this area.