V-Market: A framework for agent e-commerce systems

Software agent technology is still an emerging technology, and as such, agent based software design is still in its infancy. Software agents have just started to be used in the e-commerce domain, and they are already beginning to create a series of new possibilities for this arena. Agents can be used to automate, as well as to enhance many stages of the traditional consumer-buying behavior process. This paper proposes a software engineering approach to the design of agent mediated e-commerce systems, through the definition of an object-oriented framework. The paper presents the underlying concepts, and the architecture of the environment, showing how it allows developers to customize virtual marketplaces, and to define transaction categories on demand, incorporating many possible products and services that can be traded online. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.