egoisst: a negotiation support system for electronic business-to-business negotiations in e-commerce

Electronic negotiations can range from simple offer exchanges to complex communicative acts concerning packages of products and services. In contrast to dominant approaches aiming at automating the negotiation process (e.g. auction models), we introduce the notion of negotiation support for human negotiators conducting complex electronic negotiations. The negotiation support system egoisst for business-to-business electronic commerce is presented that is based on theories of communication and information systems and that combines communication and document management. egoisst has been successfully validated for e-negotiations in the construction industry.     

egoisst: a negotiation support system for electronic business-to-business negotiations in e-commerce

Electronic negotiations can range from simple offer exchanges to complex communicative acts concerning packages of products and services. In contrast to dominant approaches aiming at automating the negotiation process (e.g. auction models), we introduce the notion of negotiation support for human negotiators conducting complex electronic negotiations. The negotiation support system egoisst for business-to-business electronic commerce is presented that is based on theories of communication and information systems and that combines communication and document management. egoisst has been successfully validated for e-negotiations in the construction industry.     

Negotiating SLAs-An Approach for a Generic Negotiation Framework for WS-Agreement

The current Web Services Agreement specification draft proposes a simple request-response protocol for agreement creation only addressing bilateral offer exchanges. This paper proposes a framework augmenting this WS-Agreement to enable negotiations according to a variety of bilateral and multilateral negotiation protocols. The framework design is based on a thorough analysis of taxonomies for negotiations from the literature in order to allow for capturing a variety of different negotiation models within a single, WS-Agreement compatible, framework. In order to provide for the intended flexibility, the proposed protocol takes a two-stage approach: a meta-protocol is conducted among interested parties to agree on a common negotiation protocol first before the real negotiation is carried out in the second step due to the protocol established in the first step.     

Combined Negotiations in E-Commerce: Concepts and Architecture

Combined Negotiations are a novel and general type of negotiation, in which the user is interested in many goods or services and consequently engages in many negotiations at the same time. The negotiations are independent of each other, whereas the goods or services are typically interdependent. Using currently available technology for electronic negotiations, the user conducts each negotiation separately, and has the burden of coordinating and reconciling them. The inherent complexity of combined negotiations in B2C as well as B2B e-commerce calls for software support.In our research, we aim to devise a Combined Negotiation Support System (CNSS) to help the user conduct all the negotiations at the same time. The CNSS enables the user to control and monitor the progress of the negotiations, makes sure that the specified dependencies are respected, and applies user-defined strategy rules. We have designed such a CNSS which we call CONSENSUS. The architecture of CONSENSUS relies on workflow technology, negotiating software agents, and rule engine technology. The originality of this architecture lies in the fact that the user of CONSENSUS models the combined negotiation at build time using a workflow that captures the sequencing of the individual negotiations and the dependencies between them. At runtime, software agents are assigned to individual negotiations, and they participate in the combined negotiation as actors in the workflow. The user can monitor the progress of the combined negotiation as a whole, and the progress of individual negotiations via dedicated graphical user interfaces. We rely on rule engine technology to enable the agents to use negotiation strategies.The paper introduces combined negotiations with a usage scenario. Then, combined negotiations are detailed, along with the approach taken to cope with their complexity. Afterwards, we describe the functionality a CNSS should provide, and present the architecture of CONSENSUS, together with a discussion of the underlying concepts and technologies. Furthermore, we report on our prototype implementation of CONSENSUS and illustrate it with an example. A discussion of related and future work concludes the paper.     

An Internet-based negotiation server for e-commerce

This paper describes the design and implementation of a replicable, Internet-based negotiation server for conducting bargaining-type negotiations between enterprises involved in e-commerce and e-business. Enterprises can be buyers and sellers of products/services or participants of a complex supply chain engaged in purchasing, planning, and scheduling. Multiple copies of our server can be installed to complement the services of Web servers. Each enterprise can install or select a trusted negotiation server to represent his/her interests. Web-based GUI tools are used during the build-time registration process to specify the requirements, constraints, and rules that represent negotiation policies and strategies, preference scoring of different data conditions, and aggregation methods for deriving a global cost-benefit score for the item(s) under negotiation. The registration information is used by the negotiation servers to automatically conduct bargaining type negotiations on behalf of their clients. In this paper, we present the architecture of our implementation as well as a framework for automated negotiations, and describe a number of communication primitives which are used in the underlying negotiation protocol. A constraint satisfaction processor (CSP) is used to evaluate a negotiation proposal or counterproposal against the registered requirements and constraints of a client company. In case of a constraint violation, an event is posted to trigger the execution of negotiation strategic rules, which either automatically relax the violated constraint, ask for human intervention, invoke an application, or perform other remedial operations. An Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) server is used to manage events, triggers, and rules. Negotiation strategic rules can be added or modified at run-time. A cost-benefit analysis component is used to perform quantitative analysis of alternatives. The use of negotiation servers to conduct automated negotiation has been demonstrated in the context of an integrated supply chain scenario. Received: 30 October 2000 / Accepted: 12 January 2001 Published online: 2 August 2001     

基于移动Agent的电子商务模型研究

在分析电子商务中应用移动代理技术的原因和优势的基础上,设计并实现了一个基于移动代理的电子商务系统模型。描述了一种用以设计和开发电子商务系统的移动Agent技术的概要性实现框架。在电子商务中采用Agent技术的目的主要是为了解决用户在使用电子商务中遇到的相关问题,并且以较低的代价增强商家为用户提供商品和服务。移动代理技术的引入将进一步增强电子商务的吸引力及其服务的能力,有效地解决目前电子商务发展中出现的诸多问题,如资源发现、交易协商,以及交易自动化等。     

Efficient Management of Multi-Linked Negotiation Based on a Formalized Model

A Multi-linked negotiation problem occurs when an agent needs to negotiate with multiple other agents about different subjects (tasks, conflicts, or resource requirements), and the negotiation over one subject has influence on negotiations over other subjects. The solution of the multi-linked negotiations problem will become increasingly important for the next generation of advanced multi-agent systems. However, most current negotiation research looks only at a single negotiation and thus does not present techniques to manage and reason about multi-linked negotiations. In this paper, we first present a technique based on the use of a partial-order schedule and a measure of the schedule, called flexibility, which enables an agent to reason explicitly about the interactions among multiple negotiations. Next, we introduce a formalized model of the multi-linked negotiation problem. Based on this model, a heuristic search algorithm is developed for finding a near-optimal ordering of negotiation issues and their parameters. Using this algorithm, an agent can evaluate and compare different negotiation approaches and choose the best one. We show how an agent uses this technology to effectively manage interacting negotiation issues. Experimental work is presented which shows the efficiency of this approach.     

On Negotiations and Deal Making in Electronic Markets

Negotiation has traditionally been an important element in all types of commerce. As electronic commerce systems become generally available on the Internet, there is a need to support negotiation in the context of deal making. However, as in the physical world, the type of negotiation mechanism required is context dependent. In particular, we distinguish between the support required in the context of single deal and support required in coordinating negotiations across multiple deals. A framework is presented to describe deal making and negotiation in the context of a single deal. It is used to illustrate four representative Internet-based automated trading scenarios and to help understand the success of the scenario featuring online auctions. While popular, online auctions are limited in that they permit negotiation only along a single dimension such as price. We present ongoing work on multi-attribute negotiation mechanisms, and outline important new concepts relevant to supporting coordination across multiple deals.     

Webservices zur integration interaktiver elektronischer verhandlungen in elektronische marktplätze

We analyze and develop web services for the integration of spontaneous interactive bilateral multi-attribute electronic negotiations into electronic marketplaces. Conceptual and technical foundations of electronic markets and electronic negotiations, of web services and of RDF are discussed. The overall architectural design of the negotiation application and of the underlying transaction scenario is described. The information flow between the services is explained and their functionalities, as well as the documents exchanged, are developed. Finally, our results and related work are discussed and an outlook is given.     

Agent-based bilateral multi-issue negotiation scheme for e-market transactions

Software agents are flexible, autonomous, and dynamic computational entities. For electronic market (e-market) applications, the wide variety of choices to the consumers has introduced the problem of information searching. Meanwhile, there are also so many issues for the participants that require negotiations to find the best deal. In this paper, we present a bilateral multi-issue negotiation scheme, which deploys risk seeking/averse strategies and cost-oriented/benefit-oriented tactics to explore the negotiation space of possible trade-off for the one that is most likely to be acceptable. In particular, it focuses on the incorporation of the level of vagueness of preferences for those issues (either crisp or fuzzy) and multi-objective decision-making techniques. The goal of this research is to design an effective model and some constraints-based fuzzy rules and relax of these constraints to their prevailing transaction circumstances.