An online auction is a promising new way of e-shopping that conducted in electronic environments, adding another flower to the already flourishing bouquet of web experimentation methods. Online auction has become increasingly popular in recent years.
Lelong.my is the pioneer of e-auction in Malaysia which operating by using computer based information system.
An online auction is that there would be an item being offered at a starting price or the starting bid which would be defined by the seller. Then there would be the involvement of some interested buyers who declare their willingness to buy the item at certain price, any other interested buyer may offer a higher price surpassing the previous bid by some predefined increment. The price is would be continuing raised by other buyers until no one is willing to offer an even higher bid. Ultimately, the last and highest bidder gets the item. [2]
Anything could be auction online on Lelong.my, the item could be IT gadget, electronic equipment, jewelry, accessories, beauty care, clothing, watches, pens, videos, properties, cars and so on. Over the years, Lelong.my has been able to list more products and more differentiated products than any other online auction sites.
The mission or objectives of Lelong.my can be seen through their statement of serving the community and bringing a high standard of quality into homes and business by providing an avenue for online trading at a low cost. The very fundamental concern of Lelong.my which makes it more successful than other e-auction website is its double secure and verification system. In this sense, it means any user who is willing to post or trade item in Lelong.my are required to verify their member status and telephone number.
Another objective of the Lelong.my is to provide business opportunity. Any person can be the seller or supplier so long as they are able to provide qualitative and certified goods to Lelong.my. By doing so, their products would be promoted online and a good product would always have the same monetary value in return. Regardless of the starting price, a valuable product would be able to attract many bidders to bid for it. Customer will then come back again to Lelong.my for the product. Thus this is a win-win situation where supplier able to sell their goods at considerable price while customer able to purchase wanted goods at a desired price. Such creditable transaction between both parties would render Lelong.my reputation respectable and trustable thus would then able to maintain and increase users
The idea of doing online auction by Lelong.my is to provide a new platform for people to buy and sell things conveniently. The main difference of course is that customer to determine the desired price within the fixed duration that stipulated by the seller of the particular auction. Not only that, it is supplemented with the ease of shipping service. Thus convenience of customers has always been the utmost priority of Lelong.my. Bidding in Lelong.my is very convenient in the sense that the sellers can list their items and with either a simple search or navigation through categories, buyers can find those items.
Lelong.my has always wanted to be a place where Malaysian can find almost any type of item imaginable, and it achieves this through the ease of use and whole country availability. It is also good for the environment in that many things that would have otherwise ended up in landfills instead end up in a new home. It lowers the barriers of trade due its to ease of use. [3] As such, we can see that besides gaining profit from each of the sale concluded in Lelong.com, it aims to make it a widespread brand in Malaysia and may be world in future.
The users of the Lelong.my are suppliers, customers, employees of Lelong.com and banker. Relationship between each users of the Lelong.com is interrelated; lacking any of them would render the whole transaction unable to be continued.
First of all, the establishment of an office would involve many employees to perform the function of the system effectively. Their main tasks are to control the flow of the system and to ensure the running of the system is always smooth. They should also be strict in examination the products that being put by supplier to ensure their quality and legitimacy. Their duty is that among variables that available in an auction, all can be manipulated effectively.
Supplier on the other hand is the one who provides goods and services to be bid online on Lelong.my. Supplier is the first hand over the goods thus their duty is to supply goods that are in good condition and is legally obtained. The item description possibly inclusion of pictures, starting price, and auction duration are all determined by the seller. Thus, it is important to state only the true and accurate information about the item to avoid any misunderstanding.
Customers are the utmost important role in this interrelated relationship, without them, none of the transaction maintainable. A customer is the person who willing to buy any goods or services from Lelong.my with their desired price. Although customer is like the 'boss' among all parties, they should not be unscrupulous buyer, or else he or she will lose his or her credibility in which his or her account that registered as a user of Lelong.com may be deleted and blacklisted.
After a deal between seller and buyer is settled down, the banker comes into play. Bankers are those who manage the monetary transaction between both parties. A banker is one who engaged in the business of receiving other person money in deposit to be return on demand discounting other person notes and issuing his own for circulation. Since Lelong.my is an online auction thus online banking account is used to facilitate payment.
The trust between the seller and the buyer is essential in online auctions because the buyer always runs the risk of paying the winning bid without receiving the desired item, while the seller runs the risk of not getting rid of his product if the highest bidder does not fulfill his buying obligation fair starting prices, good quality items, and honest item descriptions as mandatory for our online auction experiment. [4] Lelong.com wants every buyer to be satisfied with the trade and took great care that business was carried out quickly and correctly.
There are various functions provided in system of Lelong.my. The most fundamental and significant function that create the existence of lelong.com is the login and logout system.
A login system is used when the users want to activate their account. Suppliers have to login Lelong.com in order to upload their goods that purported to be put on auction. An account is needed to be registered with the Lelong.my for a person to be potential customer in Lelong.com to bid any of the items available there.
The registration input parameter that needed to be filled up under Lelong.my by the intended user including own choice of a unique user name by which he or she is identified. Then the user must also create a password for the account. Some other personal details that are made compulsory to state including full name, e-mail address, hand phone number, gender and birthday. After the registration is done, there is a mandatory verification system which is for the confirmation of the information provided by the user.
It is the duty of the user to make sure all the information given is correct to avoid any inconvenience in future. After that user has to accept the end-user license agreement (EULA) to represent the user's authorization pass. If the EULA is not accepted, the registration is rendered void.
Besides, a user must also verify their hand phone number and e-mail address. Last but not least, the user will be given a verification code that would enable him to activate the account. After all the requirements are being fulfilled, the login system on the Lelong.my by the user could be done by put in the username created and password on the home page of Lelong.my.
A user can only log into the system by one session at a particular time. Therefore any subsequent attempt to login to Lelong.my with the same username would automatically log the user out of the previous session.
Logout function on the on the hand is like the undividable combination with login function. The ultimate function of logout is to log the user out of the system and delete the User Token Object. There is only one input parameter needed in logout function which is the token. A token is what represent a user's authorization pass which is obtainable after a user invoke to the login function and is authenticated by the back-end server.
Another function which is detrimental to an online auction like Lelong.my is the bidding function. The bidding function works by the way that the minimal increment for a higher bid depends on the current bid and is set by the platform. Then, the bidding system lets bidders set a hidden maximum price they are willing to pay for an item. For a bidder to successfully bid the item he must surpass the price by the other bidder. If the bidder wins an auction, he or she only pays the price his or her proxy needed to bid in order to parry other bids. In short, the bidding system allows bidder to state the maximum price that he or she is willing to pay without running the risk of paying more than necessary to win the item. [5]
An additional great function of the bidding system is that it has autobid function. This is especially helpful to interested buyer for a buyer could not have time to look at the bid all the the function help a buyer to bid automatically.
In Lelong.my when a user enters a maximun bid, the automatic proxy of the system would activate the autobid function which operating by letting user to set an upper bidding limit which is the maximum bid while keeping the actual bids as low as possible. If there is another intended buyer that beats the initial user's bid, autobid would function by raising the bid by one single increment more than the challenging bid. This would continue until another bidder exceeds the maximum bid set by the user or until the user himself win the auction at the end of the duration of auction.
For further understanding, an illustration of the autobid is that for example the starting bid of the item is RM100; bidder A has a hidden maximum bid of RM1000, suppose bidder B bid RM700. The current bid on the item listing page will become RM701. Then the page would appear a message stating that "thank you for your bid, but antoher bidder has a higher maximum bid. Please bid again if you are still interested". Now the buyer B bid RM 2000. the current bid on the listing page will become RM1001. A message stating that "congratulations, currently you are the high bidder" will pop out.
Then the function will automatically compare the bid with other bids on the item. If the bid is above the highest maximum bid, there will be an increase on the current bid just enough to ensure the bidder B become the highest bidder. The maximum bid is saved in case someone else bids against that amount of bid. If another bid is still below the maximum bid of bidder B, again there will be an automatic raise of the current bid. If however there is another bid exceeds the maximum bid, bidder B would no longer be the high bidder, and bidder B will be asked if he want to bid again. Bidder B can always raise the maximum bid, regardless of whether he is the highest bidder. If bidder B place a bid that is below the highest maximum bid on the item, bidder B will be told that he is not the highest bidder and he will be asked to bid again.
Improvement
Improve current server and expand into Globalization
Based on the feedbacks on the Lelong forum we found that many users has been complaining about that it takes very long time to successfully upload a picture on Lelong.my and sometimes they cannot upload picture at all. Thus it is our humble suggestion to Lelong.my to strengthen and improve their current server. A server is designated to hold large amounts of information and steam it to users as required. A large amount of network bandwidth allows for many users to work simultaneously [6] .
Thus the improvement of the server would enable the increasing number of users of Lelong.my to access the system smoothly and all the auction could be done effectively without any delay. By doing so, it would attract more and more people to register as member as well as remain those registered member.
The more transaction done, the more will Lelong.my earn for they get profit from each sale for itself. As such this effort in improving though will not have overnight result but for sure it is potential for long term gains. This is especially important if Lelong.my intends to expand their business to whole world, make it globalization.
New Function
Chating live with employees
Additionally, there is lack of operating officer online to answer users' question, it often takes over 24 hours to have the reply from the system such as live chat. It should be noted that a dedicated customer service does create value for the organization.
Even E-Bay, a worldwide online auction would never neglected customer service because it inevitable. The cost issue is not immense because all that is required is employees ready to assist consumers in need and at the same time help to weed out the weakness of the current system. Thus, Lelong.my should hire more employees to do the customer service and this actually would not carry a substantial cost.
Therefore, Lelong.my can create a new function that is chating live to solve this problem. This might increase the relationship between the buyer and dissolve the bidders question immediately. Thus, it would increase the reputation of Lelong.my.
Insurance policy
Besides, we also noticed that the auction here even including house and car and thus involvement of insurance policy in this sense is recommended to Lelong.my to be included under the system. With high-end items, there is more risk and uncertainty especially to buyer for they only look at a picture that uploaded by seller without ever seeing it.
High-end items provide larger profit for Lelong.my and thus Lelong.my should put in effort to introduce insurance policy to those high-end seller and buyer. As such, besides ensuring all properties are obtained legally, Lelong.my should also encourage them to take insurance policy to guarantee the right of both seller and buyer. This however would not influence other buyer that no dealing with high-end items.
