The design of study 2 was identical to that of study I using the same website and procedures, except for the face that the size of a seller imposed public reserve price (or minimum bid). And whether or not there were competing bids was varied. Table 4 gives details of the four conditions. A screenshot can be found in Appendix A.
Conditions I involved no reserve price and no competing bids to obtain valuations in the absence of these cuse. In the other conditions,a reserve price of either €50 or €120 was specified in the advertisement of the mp3 player.The reserve price is indicated in the price specification box of the website as “bidding starts from €50”. And a promined line in the main text of the advertisement saying that “ bids below 50 will not be accepted ”. Conditions 2 and 4 did not involve competing bids,thus allowing for a test of the isolated effect of the reserve price. Conditions 3 involved a €50 reserve price and a maximum bid of €120 and 10 bids , manipulated exactly as in study1 . Note that the opposite manipulation of a €50 high bid and a €120 reserve price is not possible because such low bids are precluded by the minimum bid requirement. A pure high bid condition with no reserve price was contained in study1.
The questionnaire was similar to that in study1 but now included questions regarding the reserve price (details in Appendix B). The dependent variable was measured by the same two questions as in study1 , that is , a personal valuation and a recommendation.