University researchers in the East Bay said Wednesday they have discovered that a number of people who use the digital bazaar at the eBay online site are buying and selling reputations along with goods and services.
Some eBay users resort to artificial means to bolster their reputation on the Internet auction site by selling and buying good feedback, according to a professor and a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. The users are taking advantage of what is one of the eBay site's key features, the reputations of the sellers and buyers.
"I could go into this market and buy lots and lots of points of reputation," said John Morgan, a Haas School of Business who co-authored the study with Jennifer Brown, a doctoral student with UC's Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. "They want to buy that reputation so people think they are a good seller."
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