Hood.de

The Beginnings

The internet auction house hood.de was founded in 2000 by Ryan Hood in Düren. The company has been profitable since 2002, but it is just another auction house.

The business model

The company hood.de sees itself as a provider of an Internet platform intended for the sale of new and used goods. However, hood.de only acts as an intermediary between buyer and seller. However, the transaction, payment and shipping of the goods takes place without the influence of hood.de. In contrast to eBay, using hood.de is completely free for buyers and sellers.

Selling Concepts

There are four different sales models on the internet platform hood.de that everyone can choose individually that suits them.

Classic Auction
A vendor of goods specifies a starting price and an end date for the auction. After listing the article, interested parties then have the opportunity to bid an amount on the respective offer. However, you can be outbid by competing interested parties at any time. The bidder who has bid the highest amount at the end of the auction will be awarded the bid.

Buy it now
The seller offers an item at a fixed price for a specified period of time. The first buyer who is willing to pay this price will be awarded the contract. This option can be selected individually or as an addition to the classic auction.

Dutch Auction
The Dutch auction is the counterpart to the classic auction. Here the seller enters a maximum price and a minimum price. After the auction has been set up, the item will be offered for the maximum price. At certain intervals, the price is gradually reduced to the minimum price. The interested party must now decide at which price he strikes: If he waits too long, it could be that someone else strikes before him at a higher price.

Store
With the shop you can offer your articles in a freely selectable overview without category chaos, just like in an online shop. In return, the seller gets his own hood shop address. However, this service is chargeable.

Membership

In order to be able to make a sale or a purchase on hood.de, you have to become a member, but it is free. To do this, you have to create a password-protected account with your personal data. From here you can view the status of your own auctions, create new auctions, rate bidders, block them or send a message and manage your member data.

rating system

Many online auction houses have introduced a rating system so that a buyer can get an idea of ??the seriousness of a seller before buying a product. With this system, sellers and buyers can evaluate the deal after each purchase. These ratings are then freely accessible to anyone who is interested and can contribute to future purchase decisions.

Hood Experiences

From a retailer`s point of view


• hood.de is nothing more than an eBay clone.
• In comparison to eBay, hood.de has far fewer members, visitors, bidders and is less frequented. This often means that it takes a long time for goods to be sold, or items are not sold at all.
• hood.de is therefore not for retailers who depend on quick sales.
• hood.de has only a very low level of awareness, which is probably also due to the fact that there is hardly any advertising
• While posting articles is free, this results in many uninteresting articles are offered and thus the attractiveness of the entire auction platform decreases.
• hood.de therefore has little chance of being able to match eBay`s success and is not a real alternative for retailers.

From a consumer perspective


• Search results cannot be sorted - this is especially disadvantageous when looking at search results want to sort by price to get the cheapest deal.
• As mentioned above, hood.de has a relatively large number of uninteresting articles offered because posting articles is free.

General defects


• It has happened that the hood.de website has been difficult or impossible to access for a long time.