Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce Research Articles

A Shopping Model in Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce

As the development of Internet, electronic commerce technology in which agent takes the role of medium is becoming more and more popular recently. It accentuates how to make use of agent technology to enhance the automation and efficiency of shopping in the Internet and businessman’s selling process. However, today’s first generation shopping agent systems are limited to comparing product usually on price instead of their full range of attribute and don’t reflect the customer’s actual purchase preference. For these limitations, we propose a new shopping model for electronic commerce based on the agent technology and elaborate how to analyze and design the agent system. Based on the agent technology, the combination of a multi-attribute evaluation model and preference evaluation model is presented. Finally, an experimental prototype system for car shopping on IBM’s Aglets is developed for demonstrating the proposed shopping model above.

Modelling user preferences and mediating agents in electronic commerce

An important ingredient in agent-mediated electronic commerce is the presence of intelligent mediating agents that assist electronic commerce participants (e.g. individual users, other agents, organisations). These mediating agents are in principle autonomous agents that interact with their environments (e.g. other agents and web-servers) on behalf of participants who have delegated tasks to them. For mediating agents a (preference) model of participants is indispensable. In this paper, a generic mediating agent architecture is introduced. Furthermore, we discuss our view of user preference modelling and its need in agent-mediated electronic commerce. We survey the state of the art in the field of preference modelling and suggest that the preferences of electronic commerce participants can be modelled by learning from their behaviour. In particular, we employ an existing machine learning method called inductive logic programming (ILP). We argue that this method can be used by mediating agents to detect regularities in the behaviour of the involved participants and induce hypotheses about their preferences automatically. Finally, we discuss some advantages and disadvantages of using inductive logic programming as a method for learning user preferences and compare this method with other approaches.

Understanding Customer Trust in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, Web-Mediated Electronic Commerce, and Traditional Commerce

Customer trust is important in agent-mediated electronic commerce, web-mediated electronic commerce, and traditional commerce. However, the meaning of customer trust in these contexts has not been clearly defined or fully delineated. This paper proposes a new trust model that differentiates between cognitive trust and emotional trust, defines customer trust in each type of commerce as cognitive trust and emotional trust in the various entities (e.g., website, computer agent) that make up a commerce context, and then compares customer trust across the three types of commerce. We propose that, first, emotional trust merits research, particularly in e-commerce. Second, both awareness of the known and awareness of the unknown will be higher in e-commerce than in traditional commerce; this will lead to lower cognitive trust and emotional trust in e-commerce. Third, the key to increase customer trust in e-commerce is to design and develop technologies to reduce the distance between a customer and each entity, thereby increasing awareness of the known and decreasing awareness of the unknown. Fourth, cognitive trust and emotional trust fall along a continuum with potentially asymmetric effects on customer dependence on entities in e-commerce (e.g., computer agent adoption). Finally, future research on customer trust in e-commerce is outlined.

On agent-mediated electronic commerce

This paper surveys and analyzes the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), concentrating particularly on the business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) aspects. From the consumer buying behavior perspective, agents are being used in the following activities: need identification, product brokering, buyer coalition formation, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The roles of agents in B2B e-commerce are discussed through the business-to-business transaction model that identifies agents as being employed in partnership formation, brokering, and negotiation. Having identified the roles for agents in B2C and B2B e-commerce, some of the key underpinning technologies of this vision are highlighted. Finally, we conclude by discussing the future directions and potential impediments to the wide-scale adoption of agent-mediated e-commerce.

A REVIEW ON THE INTERACTION ISSUES IN AGENT-BASED MARKETPLACES

While there are already literature surveys upon agent-mediated electronic commerce applications, none have specifically tackled the issue from an interaction perspective or looked at how the control is distributed among the agents. This state-of-the-art survey focuses on how agent interactions are handled. First, it deeply looks at how methods for enforcing the actions taken by agents have been dealt with, namely protocols, negotiation and auction. Second, it defines the various types of communication languages used in multi-agent market architectures. The three main alternatives are KQML, ACL and FLBC. A comparison is then made between them and shows how much they suite their purpose. Third, this paper highlights how the current electronic commerce applications provide explicit and integrated support for complex agent interactions and present several virtual institutions where agents are engaged in multiple bilateral negotiations. Finally, it discusses some related research perspectives and identify some limitations.

Agents in E-Commerce: State of the Art

This paper surveys the state of the art of agent-mediated electronic commerce (e-commerce), especially in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce and business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. From the consumer buying behaviour perspective, the roles of agents in B2C e-commerce are: product brokering, merchant brokering, and negotiation. The applications of agents in B2B e-commerce are mainly in supply chain management. Mobile agents, evolutionary agents, and data-mining agents are some special techniques which can be applied in agent-mediated e-commerce. In addition, some technologies for implementation are briefly reviewed. Finally, we conclude this paper by discussions on the future directions of agent-mediated e-commerce.

Building an agent-mediated electronic commerce system with decision analysis features

This paper describes a web-based electronic commerce system in which customers and merchants delegate the related tasks to their personal software agents. Messages passed between these agents can fully encapsulate the associated parties' points of view towards a market transaction. More specifically, an offer request consists of a list of the product attributes the customer wants to know about, a partial order of their importance, and the constraints imposed. On the other side, an offer proposal can be tailored according to the information conveyed in the corresponding offer request. Advanced features of the system include the permanent existence of our agents in the market, thus being able to learn from it, their ability to act proactively in order to initiate a transaction, and the integration of an interactive multiple criteria decision-making tool, with which a buying agent performs a comparative evaluation of the proposals in a semi-autonomous way.

Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce

Electronic commerce has been one of the traditional arenas for agent technology. The complexity of these applications has been a challenge for researchers that have developed methodologies, products, and systems, having in mind the specificities of trade, the interaction particularities of commerce, the strict notion of commitment and contract, and the clearly shaped conventions and norms that structure the field. In this paper I survey some key areas for agent technology which, although general, are of special importance in electronic commerce, namely, solid development methodologies, negotiation technologies and trust-building mechanisms. I give examples of systems in which I have directly participated, although I also try to refer to the work of other AgentLink Special Interest Group members over the last few years.

Ensuring the Success of Contract Formation in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce

This article examines a number of contractual issues generated by the advent of intelligent agent applications. The aim of the study is to provide legal guidelines for developers of intelligent agent software by addressing the contractual difficulties associated with automated electronic transactions. The author investigates whether the requirements for a legally enforceable contract are satisfied by agent applications that operate independent of human supervision. Given the relative novelty of the technology and the paucity of case law in the area, the author's observations and conclusions are based on an analysis of first principles in contract law. Additionally, the author provides an analysis of whether proposed and enacted electronic commerce legislation in various jurisdictions is sufficient to cure the inherent deficiencies of traditional contract doctrine. Given the trend towards automated electronic commerce, the author concludes by highlighting the legal requirements that must be met in order to ensure the success of agent technology in the formation of online contracts.

Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce: An MIT Media Laboratory Perspective

: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.

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.