The paper is at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487022000964 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674... and the

The paper is at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0167487022000964 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01674... and the WSJ article is archived at https://archive.is/m16g7 https://archive.is/m16g7 The Surprisingly Effective Strategy for Buying on eBay. The key, a study found, is to make your offer a round percentage off the listed price By Alina Dizik May 9, 2023 In a recent study, researchers looked at eBay transactions where buyers could either pay a listed price or make a “best offer” that was below the listed price. When buyers did make a “best offer,” they closed many more deals if the amount they offered was a round percentage of the listed price. Let’s say a seller was asking $34 for a product. An offer of $17—exactly 50% of the asking price—stood a much better chance of being accepted than an offer of $18, or 53%. Why? In these types of transactions, sellers usually don’t field more than one offer at a time—so the sellers are considering each offer individually rather than waiting for many buyers to make bids in a traditional auction. And when sellers mull each offer individually, it is likely easier to mentally process an offer that’s a round percentage. “These round percentages seem to coincide with a higher percentage of getting a deal in the end,” says Hannes Petrowsky, a research associate at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany, and the study’s lead author.