Abstract: An enhanced online auction system facilitates auction buyers listing items wanted for purchase. Users such as traders may use the auction system to search the item-wanted listings, the item-available listings, or both. Item-available listings may be offered for immediate-sale, auction, or best-offer sale. Item-wanted listings may be solicited for immediate-purchase, reverse-auction, or best-offer purchase. Item-available listings and item-wanted listings may be generated by using an existing listing as a template. All sale and purchase offers may incorporate time-dependent pricing. Auction traders may list a product line or set of item-wanted listings in a hierarchical structure. Fulfillment proposals facilitate auction sellers satisfying a set of item-wanted listings from one or more buyers. Item-available listings and item-wanted listings may be linked or cross-linked by auction traders or automatically by auction system processes.

Abstract: An enhanced online auction system enables users to submit item-wanted postings in addition to item-available postings and facilitates deferred pairing of buyers and sellers. Users such as buyers, sellers, traders, and agents may use the auction system to search the item-wanted postings, the item-available postings, or both. Item-available postings may be offered for auction, immediate-sale, or best-offer sale. Item-wanted listings may be solicited for reverse-auction, immediate-purchase, or best-offer purchase. In one embodiment, a commerce server of the present invention includes a data store that stores postings corresponding to items offered-for-sale and items wanted-for-purchase, a query module that finds postings within the data store, and a browser interface module that serves web pages for receiving listing criteria and display listings that match the listing criteria.

Abstract: An enhanced online auction system facilitates auction buyers listing items wanted for purchase. Users such as traders may use the auction system to search the item-wanted listings, the item-available listings, or both. Item-available listings may be offered for immediate-sale, auction, or best-offer sale. Item-wanted listings may be solicited for immediate-purchase, reverse-auction, or best-offer purchase. Item-available listings and item-wanted listings may be generated by using an existing listing as a template. All sale and purchase offers may incorporate time-dependent pricing. Auction traders may list a product line or set of item-wanted listings in a hierarchical structure. Fulfillment proposals facilitate auction sellers satisfying a set of item-wanted listings from one or more buyers. Item-available listings and item-wanted listings may be linked or cross-linked by auction traders or automatically by auction system processes.