Talk:Reverse auction

Procurement auction is a seldom-used term
Procurement auction is a seldom-used term. Reverse auction is the terminology used most frequently in most settings, including government and corporate.

The Issues and Opportunities section comes across as somewhat biased against the practice of reverse auctions and admonishes the reader with unsubstantiated opinions which are not provided with references

It should also be noted here that in many settings, a reverse auction sometimes refers to auctions where the lowest unique bid wins, Liverpool FC often run several of these, and I've seen them work in games Jonomacdrones 20:36, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Reverse Auction - Gambling?
Been searching the web for good local auction selling sites and came across a different type of reverse auction system by accident at playlimbo. I don't want to advertise this site, only to highlight to other wikipedia editors that the article may have a NPOV in that it focuses on B2B only. I am not sure of the extent of this type of gambling (I call it gambling because that what it seems like to me after reading the site information) but that what is occurring. Alexa page ranks give over 2 million visitors a week, so activity is significant. I would be interested to know if this is unique or is there other sites with the same type of advertising/gambling model online. Best regards --Joewski 01:41, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
 * There are definitely other reverse-auction sites along the lines of the Australian one you mentioned. I'm in the UK, and have seen two or three British sites. The general procedure is that interested parties pay an entry fee (typically a pound or two) and then enter by phone/web/text a bid. The lowest unique bid wins the item for that price, not for the largest price bid. So for a (very simplified) example, if five people bid and their bids are £3.50, £3.50, £3.67, £4.13 and £4.14, the person who bid £3.67 would win the item for £3.67 (plus delivery costs etc). I'm not sure how these sites are classified legally: since (unlike the US) online gambling is both legal and big business in the UK, it could count as that, but I don't know. 217.33.74.204 (talk) 12:09, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah... it seems that what we are talking about is a unique bid auction. From what I can gather from that article, in the UK at least they seem to be regulated by Ofcom. 217.33.74.204 (talk) 12:18, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

reverse auction part of eSourcing
Since a reverse auction is only a part of Esourcing the first line should be changed. eSourcing is the name for "electrnically supported procurement/sourcing" and contains tools like RFI, RFQ, RFP and reverse auction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.233.31 (talk) 14:40, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Unique bid auctions
Is it really likely that someone would come here when they're looking for unique bid auctions? (Not rhetorical question--I was completely unaware of a terminology overlap, still not sure how significant the overlap is.) I was thinking that a search for consumer reverse auctions would be for thinks like Priceline. Cretog8 (talk) 10:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll second that as that is exactly why I came to this page. IMHO it needs a disambiguation page.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.163.165.185 (talk) 14:44, 18 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Unique Bid Auctions are being run regularly on Absolute Radio in the UK, and are referred to by the presenters as being a "Reverse Auction". I'm not sure that a disambiguation page is needed, but at least a reference from the article to Unique Bid Auctions would be useful. DavidNorman99 (talk) 15:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

There is a site that is tracking results of a specific unique bid auction as well as what they are calling a xpress auction (which has some similarity to reverse auctions but directed at consumers). You can see the stats at http://www.dublicenter.com. From what I can see the unique bid auction is a bit like gambling. At least there is a bit of luck involved. With the reverse auction it is more a matter of being consistent to get a good price. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.130.79.218 (talk) 12:46, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

The current introduction says "A reverse auction is similar to a unique bid auction as the basic principle remains the same; however, a unique bid auction follows the traditional auction format more closely as each bid is kept confidential and one clear winner is defined after the auction finishes." I'm not sure if the similarity is important enough to be worth mentioning. Thought? Mati Roy (talk) 21:55, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

We should mention Tendering
Somewhere in the article, as suggested by Khzind. --Ronz (talk) 14:44, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

This article is strongly biased and too focused on ARIBA-style procurement auctions
The "auction" described in the main article isn't really an auction. It's a structured process for gathering proposals. One important characteristic of auctions is that there are fixed rules on who the winner will be. If the buyer can just decide which seller to pick, the word "auction" isn't really applicable. The fact that it is used anyway should of course be acknowledged. But for example, in academia, "Reverse Auction" has a very different meaning.

The other types of "reverse auctions" have similar issues - some of them enter the realm of lotteries.

So why don't we restructure this article as follows:

A Reverse Auction is an auction in which the roles of buyers and sellers are reversed. Many sellers bid for the right to sell a good or service to a single buyer. For every type of auction, a reverse auction can be constructed, typically by reversing the roles of buyers and sellers and reversing the direction in which prices change over time.

Particular types of processes similar to reverse auctions have evolved which often use the term "Reverse Auction" in a much more narrow sense.

For example, in e-procurement [...]

Something like that. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.137.187.20 (talk) 04:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. This would also make possible some exploration of older history, like a type of reverse auction apparently used in Sweden to find foster parents for orphans in the early 20th century (late 19th?), described by Harry Martinson in Flowering Nettle. Ever wonder (talk) 19:16, 11 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I just read the article. This now seems to have been fixed, right? I think we could remove the banner for the "encyclopedic style". What do y'all think? --Mati Roy (talk) 22:33, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Educational Assignment
Hello, as part of a university assignment I shall be working on this page over the next week, with aims to improve it's written style. Carl Stanyard (talk) 11:09, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be excellent. Reliable sourcing is the biggest problem at the moment, as is the editorial mess.  Kuru   (talk)  11:57, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I have changed the first few sentences of the introduction and added a sentence about the differences to unique bid auctions, hopefully this is an improvement. As this is my first real edit, feedback would be appreciated to let me know if it is up to standard :). Carl Stanyard (talk) 20:59, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Request redirect
I would like to request that a redirect be created from lowest bidder to this page. 70.247.162.84 (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Gallice's comment on this article
Dr. Gallice has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"Original: In a reverse auction, the sellers compete to obtain business from the buyer and prices will typically decrease as the sellers underbid each other.

Proposed change: In a reverse auction, the sellers compete to sell their goods or service to the buyer such that prices will typically decrease as the sellers underbid each other.

I would delete the paragraph "A reverse auction is similar to a unique bid auction as the basic principle remains the same; however, a unique bid auction follows the traditional auction format more closely as each bid is kept confidential and one clear winner is defined after the auction finishes." as I do not find it particularly relevant and actually a bit misleading since lowest unique bid auctions are quite a different mechanism both in its premises and functioning (for instance they are not used for procurement)

I am not competent to comment/modify/provide citations for the sections "contexts" and "history""

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Gallice has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:


 * Reference : Andrea Gallice, 2009. "Lowest Unique Bid Auctions with Signals," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 112, Collegio Carlo Alberto, revised Sep 2009.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:42, 27 July 2016 (UTC)