Electronic Auctions: Role of Visibility Settings in Transparency Analysis

Purpose: Main objective of the paper is to assess whether the auctions issuers have changed their preferences regarding the auction transparency described through the visibility settings, and to asses which and to what extent had the other auction parameters impact on the auction transparency and also to assess the effect of the transparency onto the achieved auction savings. Methodology/Approach: The paper analyses sample records of 5,000 electronic auctions of SR and CR auction issuers on the time frame of 2009-2016, using methods of higher statistics. An composite index for transparency analysis has been developed and assessed. Two standalone regression models were applied to analyse the papers hypotheses regarding the transparency and auctions’ savings. Findings: The size of the auction described does not have a significant effect on the transparency settings, but the auction complexity does. The most saving generating visibility settings is the visible order of the participants and the visibility of the other measurements settings for the auctions. Increasing the auction complexity can decrease the generated saving by an average 9.3%. Research Limitation/implication: Research was based on real secondary data from one electronic auction provider. The results are limited to the features enabled on this electronic platform. Results show that the application of visibility setting in auctions can generate additional benefits like savings, but also has to be applied carefully when assessing the transparency. Originality/Value of paper: The analysis and results based on real secondary data are scare in the current research area, therefore is this article a valued contribution.