Asiaone 1-42

BUSINESS
Designed for both consumers and businesses, Auction AsiaOne has a “bidding agent” feature that
helps users save their money by submitting bids on their behalf in pre-set price increments. Each
member taking part in an auction is represented by an individual agent, which is a Java-based
object, deployed at the start of an auction either by a seller or a buyer placing a bid. The “bidding
agent” helps each prospective buyer bid more effectively by keeping each member’s maximum bid
secret and bids on each member’s behalf by increasing his bid by small increments to outbid other
bidders until his maximum is reached. The agent will monitor the prospective buyer’s auctions 24
hours a day without him having to monitor it personally to ensure that the member will not be outbid
at the last minute. All the bidder has to do is to stipulate a maximum amount that he is willing to pay
and the agent will help ensure that the bidder gets his product at the lowest price possible.
As an illustration of the mechanics of this “bidding agent”, suppose there is a Palm Pilot – Palm V
available for sale at a minimum bid price of $400 and there is an existing bid from Mr Z at $410. Mr
A may be willing to pay $500 for the Palm V and he puts in the bid at $500. Instead of putting
through Mr A’s bid of $500 at the outset, the “bidding agent” will put in Mr A’s bid at $420, $10
higher than Mr Z’s bid. If Mr Z raises his bid to $430, the “bidding agent” will automatically put in a
bid for Mr A at $440, $10 higher than Mr Z’s revised bid. If Mr Z is no longer interested in bidding
further, Mr A will get to buy the Palm V at $440, instead of $500 and thus saving Mr A $60. However,
if there are other competing bids, the “bidding agent” will continue to put in bids for Mr A up to $500.
Should the other competing bids be higher than $500, the “bidding agent” will stop bidding for Mr A.
Outbidded buyers are informed via e-mail and they are allowed to put in a new higher bid.
Auction AsiaOne also gives users instant access to the hit list of the most expensive and most
sought after items, as well as the top sellers and top bidders.
Auction AsiaOne was launched on 25 January 2000 with the Club Rainbow Charity Auction. This
charity auction, jointly brought together by M1 and Nokia, saw bids for the latest model 8850 Nokia
mobile phones rising above $2,000, approximately 60% above the prevailing market price. We donated
the proceeds from this charity auction to Club Rainbow, a charitable home for children with terminal
illness. Thereafter, we had an innovative Valentine’s Day auction whereby 300 bouquets of Dutch
tulips were auctioned off at a record-breaking 6,000 bids within three days. Other promotions included
the “Rare Wines Around the World” auctions which saw bids for the exclusive Chateau Latour ’82
rise over $800 per bottle and the “Indulge in one week of luxurious Haagen-Dazs” promotion which
attracted frantic bidding from approximately 3,000 ice-cream lovers.
Through the various promotions, we have garnered an active membership base of more than 15,000
at Auction AsiaOne. There have been approximately 3,500 successful bids at Auction AsiaOne since
25 January 2000, when the site started operating. The site now handles an average of 10,000 bids
each week. To cater to the rapidly increasing customer demand, we plan to increase the number of
listed items from approximately 4,000 currently to 12,000 by end 2000. Auction AsiaOne currently
focuses on B2C auctions and C2C auctions.
A Chinese auction site will also be launched on Zaobao.com in the last quarter of 2000.
Online Services and Products
We provide a variety of online features to users in order to further enhance the users’ online experience
with our portal. We believe that the variety of online features is important in attracting users to return
to the portal.
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