Auction Sniping

Description
The pattern occurs in online auctions with deadlines, when a user bid in the very last seconds and wins the auction since no other user have the time to overbid.

Examples
On eBay, there is a video camera on sale, with a week to the deadline. There are three bidders who have actively been bidding during the week; Alice, Bob and Cheryl. The last two days Alice has been in the lead, and she feels like she have won the auction since neither Bob nor Cheryl has been bidding for a while. Ten seconds before the auction deadline, a fourth bidder, David, places a bid just over Alice's. Since the auction has been practically inactive the last days, Alice is not alert enough to take action, and David wins.

Pros and Cons
The user who snipes have a good possibility to win despite not being active during the whole bidding process. However, the other (bidding) users might be upset. The selling user probably appreciate a higher bid, no matter which time it arrives. It might be discussed whether the price might have risen even more if the sniper has been active during the whole bidding process.

The application probably want to keep as many users as possible happy, and since there might be more users that are upset about snipers than there are actual snipers, one can slightly suggest that this behavior is not to strive for.

One positive side of Auction Sniping is that it may attract professional users who, in their turn can bring more users to the site.

Relations
Mechanics that supports this behavior are Competitive in Competitic Spectrum (you can win the object for sale), Calendaring (as having a restricted time of bidding) and Leaderboard (you can see who has the leading bid, and also what that bid is). Mechanics which can counter this pattern are hiding the highest bid, or that one extends the deadline when bidding late in the auction.

A dynamic that supports Auction Sniping is Gaming The System.

Contributors
Created by Malin Mattsson.