Apply Intelligent Negotiation Agents for B2C E-commerce

Abstract

B2C e-commerce is becoming more widespread as more people come to recognize its convenience. However, many electronic marketplaces, especially in the business-to-consumer, are in essence some kind of search engine and usually such e-marketplaces do not use agent technology. In addition, in current situation, price is the only criterion and easy to measure and automate. However, criteria for advanced transactions need to be more elaborating, e.g. giveback, dividend. In this paper, we present a multiple-attributes negotiation model for B2C e-commerce, which deploys intelligent agents to facilitate autonomous and automatic online buying and selling by intelligent agents while providing fast response to consumers. These include a 4-phase model, information collecting, searching/offer gathering, negotiating, and evaluating. We also apply fuzzy theory and analytical hierarchy process to develop the system interface to facilitate the user inputs. Finally, an example of notebook buying process is illustrated.