Yahoo-Kimo's online auction is free to buyers and sellers, but beyond the benefits of stickiness, it generates no income for the company.
This fact, along with the recent arrival of eBay Taiwan, has led some to suspect the Yahoo-Kimo campaign is intended to pre-empt a marketing blitz by the newcomer.
Visitors to the Yahoo-Kimo home page will find a button taking them to the promotion, where eight characters, rendered in a style reminiscent of the movie, Toy Story, greet them.
Miss Robo is matron'd of the chatroom. Miss AutoBuy and Free Monkey are MCs of the buyer and seller testimonials.
Dr Big oversees prizes offered during the promotion, and ChaBa, who has a head like a soccer ball, is in charge of the NT$1 deal of the day.
Key among them, however, is Teacher Cat who guides neophytes through a consumer-to-consumer auction tutorial.
Charlene Hung, marketing manager of Yahoo-Kimo, said the time was right to relaunch the auction service.
"Taiwan's B2C (business to consumer) market is mature, and integration issues from the merger are behind us, she explained. (Yahoo bought Kimo in January 2001 and combined the sites last October.)
"It's time to push forward with the development of C2C. Yahoo-Kimo's auction went online last September, and now has 240,000 sale items listed, compared with 79,000 for ubid.com.tw.
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