Robert H. Guttman

Agents that buy and sell

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM March 1999/Vol. 42, No. 3 81 However, the potential of the Internet for transforming commerce is largely unrealized. Electronic purchases are still largely nonautomated. While information about products and vendors is more easily accessible, and orders and payments are dealt with electronically, humans are still in the loop in all stages of the buying process, adding to transaction costs. A human buyer is still responsible for collecting and interpreting information on merchants and products, making decisions about merchants and products, and ultimately entering purchase and payment information. Software agent technologies can be used to automate several of the most time-consuming stages of the buying process. Unlike socalled traditional software, software agents are personalized, continuously running, and semiautonomous [1]. These qualities help optimize the whole buying experience, revolutionizing commerce as we know it [2]. For example, a company that needs to opular software agents were first used several years

Agent-mediated electronic commerce: a survey

Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved in buying and selling products over the Internet. This paper surveys several of these agent-mediated electronic commerce systems by describing their roles in the context of a Consumer Buying Behavior (CBB) model. The CBB model we present augments traditional marketing models with concepts from Software Agents research to accommodate electronic markets. We then discuss the variety of Artificial Intelligence techniques that support agent mediation and conclude with future directions of agent-mediated electronic commerce research.

Agent-Mediated Integrative Negotiation for Retail Electronic Commerce

Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved in buying and selling products over the Internet. Although shopping agents provide convenience for consumers and yield more efficient markets, todays first-generation shopping agents are limited to comparing merchant offerings only on price instead of their full range of value. As such, they do a disservice to both consumers and retailers by hiding important merchant value-added services from consumer consideration. Likewise, the increasingly popular online auctions pit sellers against buyers in distributive negotiation tug-of-wars over price. This paper analyzes these approaches from economic, behavioral, and software agent perspectives then proposes integrative negotiation as a more suitable approach to retail electronic commerce. Finally, we identify promising techniques (e.g., multi-attribute utility theory, distributed constraint satisfaction, and conjoint analysis) for implementing agent-mediated integrative negotiation.

A Real-Life Experiment in Creating an Agent Marketplace

Software agents help people with time-consuming activities. One relatively unexplored area of application is that of agents that buy and sell on behalf of users. We recently conducted a real-life experiment in creating an agent marketplace, using a slighly modified version of the Kasbah system. Approximately 200 participants intensively interacted with the system over a one-day (six-hour) period. This paper describes the set-up of the experiment, the architecture of the electronic market and the behaviours of the agents. We discuss the rationale behind the design decisions and analyze the results obtained. We conclude with a discussion of current experiments involving thousands of users interacting with the agent marketplace over a long period of time, and speculate on the long-range impact of this technology upon society and the economy.

Cooperative vs. Competitive Multi-Agent Negotiations in Retail Electronic Commerce

A key lesson learned from economic and game theory research is that negotiation protocols have substantial, rippling effects on the overall nature of the system, online auctions are increasingly popular negotiation protocols for software agents (and humans) to compete on the prices of goods and services. This paper takes a critical look at these competitive protocols in retail markets from economic, game theoretic, and business perspectives. Our analysis suggests that online auction protocols are, in fact, less efficient and more hostile than would be expected (or desired) in retail markets. Furthermore, we identify the importance of customer satisfaction and propose more cooperative multi- agent decision analysis tools (e.g., Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) and negotiation protocols (e.g., Distributed Constraint Satisfaction) as promising techniques to support it.

Agents as Mediators in Electronic Commerce

Software agents are programs to which one can delegate (aspects of) a task. They differ from “traditional” software in that they are personalized, continuously running and semi-autonomous. These qualities make agents useful for a wide variety of information and process management tasks [406]. It should come as no surprise that these same qualities are particularly useful for the information-rich and process-rich environment of electronic commerce.

Agent-mediated electronic commerce: an MIT media laboratory perspective

Abstract: Software agents, semi-intelligent autonomous tools, will play an increasing role in electronic commerce applications. This paper gives an overview of the work at MIT’s Media Laboratory on several types of agents for electronic commerce, ranging from consumer-to-consumer “smart” classified-ad systems to merchant agents that provide integrative negotiation capabilities, from agents that facilitate expertise brokering to distributed reputation facilities, and from point-of-sale comparison-shopping agents to mobile shopping systems.

Agents as Meditors in Electronic commerce

Software agents help automate a variety of tasks including those involved by buying and selling products over the Internet. This paper surveys several of these agent mediated electronic commerce sy...