| 摘要 |
A competitive environment in which merchants compete for sales in a reverse auction format in which there are many sellers and a single buyer is disclosed. Merchants purchase prominent placement on product search results lists based on a negotiable per-sale fee. A customer discount is derived from the per-sale fee negotiated with each merchant. The customer discount may be shared with customers by subtracting the customer discount from a merchant market price. The result is a final customer price that determines the merchant's position in the product search results list. Merchants having the lowest final customer price are placed at the top of the search results list, while merchants having higher final customer prices are placed further down the list. Merchants may influence their position on the search results list by agreeing to pay a different amount for each sale.
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