Two statisticians from the University of Maryland' s Robert H. Smith School of Business analysed the auction behavior of buyers in 2003 and found that they save $7 billion that they might have otherwise payed buying the product somewhere else.
If the study was done in 2007, the projected saving would be in the area of $19 billion using linear projections.
The full article can be seen here.
Most people go to eBay for two main reason; the sell an item for more than they could get elsewhere and to buy an item for a discounted price. This may seem odd that people go to the same website for two completely differenty reasons. One group of people that the sell high, buy low philosophy does not seem odd to is college students search for textbooks.
A high end textbook can cost as much as $100 and many books cost well more than that. The return price that university book stores give students may only be 20 percent, that is if they buy your books back at all. Students that browse online auction, or discounted price sites like eBay can find buyers for their used textbooks for a price that is more then the book store will give and the buyers of the books will pay less then they would at the book stores, so each side benefits.
An interesting study to do to further look at the money involved in eBay would to see how many buyers get ripped off by sending the seller money and never getting the item that they payed for. You can rate the seller on eBay to insure that you are dealing with someone that is honest, but with so much money changing hands and millions of items to buy, people have to get ripped off along the way.
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