The effects of electronic word-of-mouth messages, psychological endowment and anticipated regret on online bidding behavior

This study applied an empirical method to understand the impact of electronic word-of-mouth messages, psychological endowment and anticipated regret on consumers’ online bidding behavior. The results indicated that during the early stage of an online auction, the more positive than negative electronic word-of-mouth messages there are, the higher the consumers’ bidding intention and bidding price. During the auction’s bidding stage, bidders who respond with psychological endowment have higher rebidding intention and a rebidding price than those without psychological endowment. In addition, those bidders who respond with psychological endowment will raise their bidding price even more at the final stage of the auction because of their sense of anticipated regret. These results will allow online auction companies to set up criteria for the operation and management of customer-to-customer transactions.