The broadcast marketplace : Designing a more efficient local marketplace for goods and services
Name
823862566-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
7.4 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4e471f0f3525322e3c04081d7e875d21
Author(s)
Blackshaw, Matthew (Matthew Andrew)
Advisor(s)
Andrew Lippman.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Today's online marketplaces for goods and services are imperfect. Participants make an initial post expressing their intention to buy or sell an object, but all offers on this post are private. These offers can be seen as expressions of other participants' intentions to buy or sell the same item. What if these offers were as public as the initial post? Would this decrease market friction and enable participants to close transactions more efficiently? What if every post and offer were tagged with a location enabling a real-time proximal picture of supply and demand? In this thesis, we explore a different kind of marketplace, a broadcast marketplace, where a combination of public post, proximal awareness and mobility decrease the friction of information flow and facilitate efficiency. This thesis explores the design, implementation and deployment of a system which enables users to efficiently view, understand and act upon this proximal picture of supply and demand. To test the viability of the broadcast marketplace we deployed Peddl, an implementation of the idea, in the MIT and Cambridge, MA community. Over the course of the trial we collected data on 5,839 unique visitors and 805 registered users, who made 726 posts totaling $234,913 in value. From this data we show that the additional transparency of supply and demand afforded by our design results in increased marketplace activity.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-74).
Subjects
Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.
MIT Department
Program in Media Arts and Sciences (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but
reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
