Profit earning and monetary loss bidding in online entertainment shopping: the impacts of bidding patterns and characteristics

Online entertainment shopping has emerged as an innovative business model, integrating features of electronic commerce, auctions, games, and lotteries. Prior literature has rarely provided an understanding of the effects of electronic market factors on players’ bidding performance in entertainment shopping. We attempt to fill this research gap by analyzing how players’ bidding patterns and characteristics can affect bidding performance. An empirical study with 5650 players’ participation data collected from a leading entertainment shopping website is conducted. Results confirm that players’ bidding performance, including profit earning and monetary loss bidding, is strongly associated with bidding patterns and characteristics. Based on empirical findings, players loyal to the website contribute more profit to the website. The website should pay more attention to loyal players and strategically limit players that are good at bidding, in order to avoid losing and winning polarizations. Furthermore, players with different product preferences have different weights for profit and entertainment, and player preferences can be transformed into monetary value for the website.