Sealed-bid multi-attribute reverse auction strategies and revenue analysis

Sealed-bid multi-attribute reverse auction has been widely used in government procurement and corporate mass purchase. Bidding strategies and auction revenue are the main concerns of buyer and sellers. In this paper, firstly, we propose an improved sealed-bid multi-attribute reverse auction model. Further, we give the bidding and auctioning strategies and the expected revenue of bidders and auctioneer respectively through the mathematical analysis methods based on the improved model. Lastly, we analyze the mathematical properties of the bidder´s optimal bidding price and expected revenue, and explain their practical economic meaning. These explicit mathematical solutions can provide the efficient and effective decision support for the auction participants during the period of online bidding, and it is also helpful to the realization of online automatic e-procurement.