Agent-based multi-factors adaptive negotiation in E-Commerce

Abstract

With the rapid growth of electronic commerce, there is growing demand and great potential for online negotiation services. Negotiation is a process between buyers and sellers in a business transaction trying to reach an agreement on one or more issues. The outcome of the negotiation depends on several parameters such as the Agents' strategies and the knowledge one Agent has about the others. It is important that an Agent chooses a proper negotiation strategy based on negotiation factors in order to achieve its maximum utility. In this paper, we first propose a negotiation model according to Agent's four factors: belief, time, competition and opportunity. Based on this model, we then present an adaptive negotiation strategy that a negotiator can use to increase its utility. The strategy adapts itself based on information obtained from the negotiation process. Our experimental results show that buyer Agent and seller Agent can obtain their maximum utilities and the best satisfaction degrees through the adaptive negotiation strategy.