Abstract

With a view to sustainable consumption, electronic auction markets and trading platforms open up new scope. This potential is essentially based on the opportunity to extend the life and use phase of products by marketing used goods and thus to avoid additional environmental pollution through new purchases. Up to now, the exploitation of reuse opportunities in the area of private households has often failed because transaction costs were too high, so that trade in second-hand products remained limited to regional markets. Due to these obstacles, neither locally nor regionally a critical size for markets for second-hand goods was reached which could be attractive for both suppliers and demanders. However, due to the rapid increase in the use of the Internet and the emergence of large trading platforms such as eBay, the general conditions have changed fundamentally in recent years.

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