Modelling business negotiations for electronic commerce

Abstract

E-commerce "localizes global markets" by opening remote markets to retail and to small companies. Newly developed E-commerce tools allow individual and organizational buyers to search for suppliers anywhere and make deals electronically. We propose a software agent that interacts with a buyer and elicits information about the criteria, preferences, and limitations, and that conducts business negotiation on behalf of the buyer. The agent has been implemented and tested in Negoplan, a software system that supports the simulation of decision processes. Results of several negotiation simulations are presented. About the Authors Gregory E. Kersten is a Senior Research Scholar with the Decision Analysis and Support Project at IIASA. S. Szpakowicz is Professor of Computer Sciences at the School of Information Technology and Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada. Modelling Business Negotiations for Electronic Commerce G. E. Kersten S. Szpakowicz 1. Introduction Internet conn...