Coveted or overlooked? The psychology of bidding for comparable listings in digital auctions

This article elaborates on, and provides evidence of the herd behavior bias - the tendency to gravitate toward, and bid for, auction listings with one or more existing bids, ignoring comparable or even more attractive unbid-for listings available at the same time - exhibited by buyers in digital auctions. Some listings attract many bidders and become "coveted", the center of bidding attention, while other equivalent or even superior listings are "overlooked", receiving no bids at all, Empirical analysis using data from digital auctions across different product categories shows that this herd behavior bias is attenuated with increasing bid price, but increases with the difficulty of evaluating quality. The practical implications of these findings, and promising research opportunities in this area are also discussed.