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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

The auctions are run by the dominant leader in the space (Ocean Spray). Supposedly they are selling off "excess product". The accusation is that they are selling with a starting bid that is lower than the actual cost to make the cranberry concentrate...on purpose, to manipulate the market.

Typically called predatory dumping.

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It sounds like the demand for is juice low due to sugar labeling requirements. The demand for the husks is high however and the left over juice is a byproduct of harvesting the cranberry husks for craisans.

So what is the right answer? Dump the juice in the river? That's like throwing away money since it seems like someone is willing to buy it.

But it is still an auction, right? As in, if the starting price is less than the market price it should still get bid higher and there won't be a market irregularity?

I don't see how this can be considered predatory though.

It's still an auction. It should sell at the market price.

In theory, they should be able to open their action at $1 and that would be totally fair. If they were selling at $1 that would be a different matter, but the auction structure should guarantee that goods aren't sold at substantially below-market.

I assume that's why it's currently just an accusation and not a given. It is still possible to control pricing with an auction if you dump enough product with no reserve price...basic supply/demand.

A cynic might say they chose the auction route specifically to avoid the appearance of dumping, but ensured they would dump enough volume to get the effect they wanted.

Nobody seems to be debating that the sales price is currently lower than the actual cost to produce the product.

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