Trust-oriented buyer strategies for seller reporting and selection in competitive electronic marketplaces

In competitive electronic marketplaces where some selling agents may be dishonest and quality products offered by good sellers are limited, selecting the most profitable sellers as transaction partners is challenging, especially when buying agents lack personal experience with sellers. Reputation systems help buyers to select sellers by aggregating seller information reported by other buyers (called advisers). However, in such competitive marketplaces, buyers may also be concerned about the possibility of losing business opportunities with good sellers if they report truthful seller information. In this paper, we propose a trust-oriented mechanism built on a game theoretic basis for buyers to: (1) determine an optimal seller reporting strategy, by modeling the trustworthiness (competency and willingness) of advisers in reporting seller information; (2) discover sellers who maximize their profit by modeling the trustworthiness of sellers and considering the buyers’ preferences on product quality. Experimental results confirm that competitive marketplaces operating with our mechanism lead to better profit for buyers and create incentives for seller honesty.     

The impact of perceived ease of use on Internet service adoption: The moderating effects of temporal distance and perceived risk

Perceived ease of use is found to affect consumer’s intention toward using an Internet-based service. However, to protect online transaction security, more security verification mechanisms are established which in turn increase the complexity and difficulty of using online services. This study proposed that the importance of perceived ease of use is depending on short- vs. long-term transaction expectation, product type, and whether security concern information is presented. In certain situations buyers or sellers of an Internet service may tolerate the inconvenience of using the Internet-based service. A 2 (verification requirement) × 2 (network externality) × 2 (short vs. long term) between-subject design was conducted on sellers of an auction site and a 2 (verification requirement) × 2 (product type) × 2 (with vs. without security concern information) between-subject design was conducted on buyers of an auction site. The results of two studies suggest that perceived ease of use increases the intention toward using online service when sellers expect that the Internet service usage is only for a short-term transaction or when buyers have no access of the security concern information on the website. In contrast, sellers prefer using an online service which requires a relatively high verification requirement when the purpose of using Internet service is for long-term transaction or when buyers have access of security concern information. The results also showed that perceived network externality positively affect sellers’ intention toward using an auction website.     

COMBINING TRUST MODELING AND MECHANISM DESIGN FOR PROMOTING HONESTY IN E‐MARKETPLACES

In this paper, we propose a novel incentive mechanism for promoting honesty in electronic marketplaces that is based on trust modeling. In our mechanism, buyers model other buyers and select the most trustworthy ones as their neighbors to form a social network which can be used to ask advice about sellers. In addition, however, sellers model the reputation of buyers based on the social network. Reputable buyers provide truthful ratings for sellers, and are likely to be neighbors of many other buyers. Sellers will provide more attractive products to reputable buyer to build their own reputation. We theoretically prove that a marketplace operating with our mechanism leads to greater profit both for honest buyers and honest sellers. We emphasize the value of our approach through a series of illustrative examples and in direct contrast to other frameworks for addressing agent trustworthiness. In all, we offer an effective approach for the design of e‐marketplaces that is attractive to users, through its promotion of honesty.     

DESIGN OF AN ITERATIVE MULTI-ITEM DOUBLE-AUCTION MECHANISM

There have been many multi-item auction mechanisms. As it is not allowed for both sellers and buyers to submit bids and offers in nearly all existing multi-item auction mechanisms, the impartial profit distribution for both sellers and buyers cannot be realized in those mechanisms. Although it is possible for both sellers and buyers to submit bids and offers in a combinatorial exchange, the impartial profit distribution for all individual participants cannot be realized due to its pricing mechanism that focuses only on enforcing budget balance. This paper proposes an iterative multi-item unit-demand and unit-supply double-auction mechanism with a new winner determination and pricing mechanism for distributing profit impartially from the viewpoints of individual participants regardless of whether they are buyers or sellers. It also analyzes the theoretical features of the proposed auction mechanism, including those related to its strategic behavior and efficiency.     

Migrating Procurement onto the Internet

The emergence of advanced technology and the Internet leads to a trend for companies to migrate onto or to publicize themselves on the Internet as a business norm. Such migration involves business reengineering in procurement processes, which would result in pros and cons such as procurement time and cost saving, and resistance to change respectively for both buyers and sellers. This paper presents the migration of procurement onto the Internet, highlighting the ways in which business processes can be changed with the necessary technical requirements, and the possible pros and cons are encountered during the migration. An industrial example is used to illustrate the corresponding evolution as a result of electronic commerce (EC) deployment.     

Computational pricing in Internet era

Pricing plays a central rule to a company’s profitability, and therefore has been extensively studied in the literature of economics. When designing a pricing mechanism/ model, an important principle to consider is “price discrimination”, which refers to selling the same resources with different prices according to different values of buyers. To meet the “price discrimination” principle, especially when the number of buyers is large, computational methods, which act in a more accurate and principled way, are usually needed to determine the optimal allocation of sellers’ resources (^{whom to sell to}) and the optimal payment of buyers (^{what to charge}). Nowadays, in the Internet era in which quite a lot of buy and sell processes are conducted through Internet, the design of computational pricing models faces both new challenges and opportunities, considering that (i) nearly realtime interactions between people enable the buyers to reveal their needs and enable the sellers to expose their information in a more expressive manner, (ii) the large-scale interaction data require powerful methods for more efficient processing and enable the sellers to model different buyers in a more precise manner. In this paper, we review recent advances on the analysis and design of computational pricing models for representative Internet industries, e.g., online advertising and cloud computing. In particular, we introduce how computational approaches can be used to analyze buyer’s behaviors (i.e., equilibrium analysis), improve resource utilization (i.e., social welfare analysis), and boost seller’s profit (i.e., revenue analysis). We also discuss how machine learning techniques can be used to better understand buyer’s behaviors and design more effective pricing mechanisms, given the availability of large scale data. Moreover, we make discussions on future research directions on computational pricing, which hopefully can inspire more researchers to contribute to this important domain.     

Online auctions,messaging, communication and social facilitation: a simulation and experimental evidence

This is a study of social facilitation effects in online auctions. We focus on the growth in online auctions, and the emergence of instant messaging and communication availability technologies. These two trends merge to provide a collaborative online social framework in which computer mediated communication may affect the behaviour of participants in online auctions. The interaction between buyers and sellers in traditional, face-to-face markets creates phenomena such as social facilitation, where the presence of others impacts behaviour and performance. In this study we attempt to replicate and measure social facilitation effects under the conditions of virtual presence. Does social facilitation apply to online auctions, and if so, how can it influence the design of online settings? We developed and used a simulated, Java-based Internet Dutch auction. Our findings indicate that social facilitation does indeed occur. In an experimental examination, participants improve their results and stay longer in the auction under conditions of higher virtual presence. Participants also indicate a preference for auction arrangements with higher degrees of virtual presence. Theoretically, this study contributes to the study of social facilitation, adding evidence of the effect when the presence is virtual.     

E-Commerce in the Indian Insurance Industry: Prospects and Future

With the advent of the Internet, online processes are replacing conventional models in our society. The greatest impact in online technology has been achieved by e-commerce. E-commerce is attractive both to buyers and sellers as it reduces search costs for buyers and inventory costs for sellers. In this paper we investigate the impact of e-commerce on the insurance industry in India. The recent growth of Internet infrastructure and introduction of economic reforms in the insurance sector have opened up the monopolistic Indian insurance market to competition from foreign alliances. We study the evolving scenario in the insurance industry in India and identify the features of online insurance that improve the conventional insurance model and thus, makes it more attractive for the Indian insurance industry to go online.     

网络商务中第三方平台在解决信任问题上的作用研究

网络第三方是保证网络商务公平,公证交易的关键参与者,它通过一定的机制博取买卖双方共同的信任,促使交易的形成。全文首先介绍了影响网络商务信任度的几个因素,即网络平台本身,消费者和网络商店。随后则从五个方面说明了网络商务第三方平台在解决信任问题上的作用:为卖方建立商铺提供基础条件;为买卖双方,及买家之间提供信息沟通的渠道;实现网络商务的监督作用,信用评价作用,支付的支撑作用。     

基于群组的C2C电子商务信任模型研究

国内的电子商务平台大多采用eBay信任模型,对买家反馈评分进行简单累加得到卖家信誉值,未区分买家反馈评分的合理性及其参考价值的重要程度。为此,提出一种基于群组的C2C电子商务信任模型,通过计算买家与卖家的熟悉度,确定买家的可信度,综合考虑反馈评分、交易次数、交易价格、交易时间、以往买家的可信度对信誉的影响,构建电子商务信任模型。模拟实验结果证明,相比Sporas模型,该模型能为买家提供更全面、更准确的卖家信誉信息。     

Evaluating the trustworthiness of advice about seller agents in e-marketplaces: A personalized approach

In this paper, we present a model for evaluating the trustworthiness of advice about seller agents in electronic marketplaces. In particular, we propose a novel personalized approach for effectively handling unfair ratings of sellers provided to buyer agents from other buyers (called advisors). Our approach offers flexibility for buyers to weight their value for private and public knowledge about advisors. A personalized approach is proposed as well for buyers to model the trustworthiness of sellers, based on the advice provided. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach can effectively model trustworthiness for both advisors and sellers, even when there are large numbers of unfair ratings.     

电子结算系统的设计方案

网上购物是指买卖双方利用简单、快捷和低成本的电子通讯方式进行各种商贸活动的一种交易模式。电子结算作为其中的组成部分,决定了交易进行的最终步骤能否成功,其重要性不言而喻。系统主要以ASP.NET作为开发基础,使用了Microsoft公司的Visual Studio 2008作为开发环境。基本实现了网上购物中的电子结算应具备的主要功能,包括:在线支付,支付网关管理,买家购物管理和卖家销售及库存管理等功能。该系统界面简洁,操作容易,维护方便。     

Operational efficiency of decentralized Internet auction mechanisms

The recent consumer-to-consumer (C2C) Internet auction boom at eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, and other sites has added new theoretical challenges to the science of auctions. This paper uses experiments with economically-motivated human subjects to measure the operational efficiency of decentralized Internet auction mechanisms as they compare to centralized double auction mechanisms. Subjects are recruited randomly from the undergraduate population of a large urban university to be buyers or sellers in a simulated trading environment. They are randomly assigned costs and values for 10 units of a virtual product. During the experiment subjects trade these units through computer terminals in auctions similar to those held on eBay and generate profits, which subjects receive at the end of the experiment. The paper uses data from this experiment and previous laboratory experiments to compare operational efficiency and convergence pattern of prices to equilibrium levels in continuous double auctions versus online Internet auctions based on two variables: auction size and time. Experimental results suggest that, because of their decentralized nature, Internet auctions require a few more participants and more time to achieve operational efficiency levels than centralized markets which use continuous double auction mechanisms.     

Optimizing ad hoc trade in a commercial barter trade exchange

In this paper, we describe the operation of barter trade exchanges by identifying key techniques used by trade brokers to stimulate trade and satisfy member needs, and present algorithms to automate some of these techniques. In particular, we develop algorithms that emulate the practice of trade brokers by matching buyers and sellers in such a way that trade volume is maximized while the balance of trade is maintained as much as possible.We model the trade balance problem as a minimum cost circulation problem (MCC) on a network. When the products have uniform cost or when the products can be traded in fractional units, we solve the problem exactly. Otherwise, we present a novel stochastic rounding algorithm that takes the fractional optimal solution to the trade balance problem and produces a valid integer solution. We then make use of a greedy heuristic that attempts to match buyers and sellers so that the average number of suppliers that a buyer must use to satisfy a given product need is minimized. We present results of empirical evaluation of our algorithms on test problems and on simulations built using data from an operating trade exchange.     

Analyzing strategies of mobile agents on malicious cloud platform with Agent-Based Computational Economic Approach

Cloud computing is a service model that enables resource-limited mobile devices to remotely execute tasks from a server. The mobile agent is a software program installed in the mobile device to negotiate a diversity of commerce transactions with other mobile agents in the cloud. However, the negotiation plans carried by mobile agents are easily be eavesdropped on by the malicious cloud platforms, since the codes of mobile agents are read and executed by the cloud platform. Thus, sellers can tailor the negotiation plans to cheat buyers for seizing buyers’ profits in negotiations after eavesdropping on buyers’ negotiation plans. In this paper, we consider the buyers can take actions to resist the sellers’ cheatings, which is that the buyers can tailor their plans with extremely low demand to decrease sellers’ profits before migrate to the hosts. In this paper, we consider actions that buyers can take to resist sellers’ cheatings, that is the buyers can tailor their plans with extremely low demands before migrate to the cloud platform. Above situations between buyers and sellers are modeled as a mathematical model called Eavesdropping and Resistance of Negotiation (ERN) Game. The strategies of the buyers and sellers playing the ERN Game are analyzed by the Agent-Based Computational Economic approach. The simulation results show the cooperative strategies will be emerged between buyers and sellers in the ERN Game.     

Production planning, negotiation and coalition integration: A new tool for an innovative e-business model

Despite the positive expectations and although they are nowadays considered the most spread Business to Business (B2B) solution, e-marketplaces are still far from representing a real tool for the extended enterprise: as the dramatic down-turn in the e-commerce sector demonstrated, e-business initiatives require solid business models that clearly relate the services provided to the overall profitability of the company. In this paper, we take a particular but quite general e-marketplace business model as our point of departure and use that model to motivate the development of algorithms to support management of trade among buyers and sellers. Specifically, e-marketplaces profitability can be increased by an integration of production planning, negotiation and coalition support tools. Production planning tools allow to create a link between commercialization and production activities, supplying a better service for customer, negotiation tools allow to make transactions taking into account both buyers’ and sellers’ goals and, finally, coalition represent the proposed course of action for small and medium suppliers not able to fully respond to the customer requests. This paper presents an innovative approach, based on multi-agent system, and a concerning simulation test-bed conducted to demonstrate, in a quantitative way, the advantages arising by adopting the proposed approach.     

Repeated use of online auctions: investigating individual seller motivations

Online auctions, connecting sellers and buyers on the Internet, are a specific type of eMarketplaces. eMarketplaces rely on repeat business in order to build scale, yet little is known about the drivers of repeated use by sellers. Based on an empirical investigation of individual, private sellers, this paper identifies the determinants of their repeated use of online auctions. It demonstrates that repeated use is driven by expectancy concerning performance and effort and by the facilitating conditions provided by auction sites. However, repeated use of online auctions is neither directly motivated by social influences, nor is it moderated by sellers’ demographics.     

优化网上数码商店设计与实现

随着网络的不断普及,网上购物依靠其方便、实惠等优点成为一种流行的购物方式.支付宝等安全支付手段,让众多的消费者对网上购物更加信任.本网站除了具有普通网站的基本功能外,同时增加了商品参数的对比,并利用第三方控件,方便卖家对于商品信息的管理;合理的设计从而方便买家和卖家更符合B2C的人性化.     

Internet化学资源的发展状况与展望

将从Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ化学资源导航系统、化学虚拟社区、电子出版物、电子会议、化学数据库、化学软件,以及信息的自动推送等方面。回顾和评述Ｉｎｔｅｒｎｅｔ网络化学信息资源发展的历史及现状,展望其未来的发展方向。     

The concept of decentralized and secure electronic marketplace

For commerce (electronic or traditional) to be effective, there must be a degree of trust between buyers and sellers. In traditional commerce, this kind of trust is based on such things as societal laws and customs, and on the intuition people tend to develop about each other during interpersonal interactions. The trustworthiness of these factors is based, to a large extent, on the geographical proximity between buyers and sellers. But this proximity is lost in e-commerce. In conventional electronic marketplaces the trust among participants is supported by a central server which imposes certain trading rules on all transactions. But such centralized marketplaces have serious drawbacks, among them: lack of scalability, and high cost. In this paper we propose the concept of Decentralized Electronic Marketplace (DEM) which allow buyers and sellers to engage in commercial transactions, subject to an explicitly stated set of trading rules, called the law of this marketplace—which they can trust to be observed by their trading partners. This trust is due to a decentralized, and thus scalable, mechanism that enforces the stated law of the DEM. We implement an electronic marketplace for airline tickets in order to illustrate the feasibility of the proposed concepts for decentralized and secure electronic marketplace.