Ever look at a "sale" on QVC? They show you retail price vs. sale price/how many people have bought/and how much time is remaining. Why? Because all these are designed to induce the customer to make a purchase. The actual worth of a product is determined by the market, all the other bells and whistles about "sales" are just a way to induce customer to buy. And no matter what you are shopping for there is always a range of price you can find. If I choose to list an item at the MSRP and put on a forever "sale", that shows to the customer what they are saving over list price I can do this, if someone else chose to only show the final discounted price thats OK too. In fact showing only the discount price is something you never want to do in sales. This lowers the market price over time. When my do sales in my day job, I never give customer a price unless at the same time i tell them how much "discount" they are getting off of list price.
Going back to the QVC example, the fact that both retail and sale price are listed as time counts down is NOT an accident. Psychology of retail tells us that you want to make the customer feel that the item is limited, they are getting a good deal, and there are many other customers who are also satisfied with the product. Next time you see a commercial on TV you will find aspects of all these elements. If the customer feels like they are not getting a quality product, the item's review will suffer and eventually they will stop buying because it is of low quality. Ebay's feedback system already has this covered. Arbitrarly forcing a 14 day waiting period between sales is makes no business sense from a sales perspective. Did anyone at ebay goto business school and study marketing at all?
