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.