Title:	AGENT NEGOTIATION STRATEGY IN THE ELECTRONIC MARKETPLACE
Author(s):	Dorin Militaru
ISBN:	978-972-8924-60-7
Editors:	António Palma dos Reis
Year:	2008
Edition:	Single
Keywords:	Intelligent Agents, Electronic Commerce, Game Theory, Searching Rules JEL Classification: C68, C72, D4, D83.
Type:	Short Paper
First Page:	161
Last Page:	165
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	The design of the negotiation strategy used by an agent to decide its negotiation behavior is a key problem in building negotiating agents. In the electronic marketplace, the outcome of a negotiation depends on many parameters including the agents' reservation limits, the number of buying and selling agents, their attitude toward time. In this paper, we focus on Internet searching agents which are tools allowing consumers to compare on-line Web-stores’ prices for a product. The main purpose of the study is to investigate how costly information could affect the performance of several types of searching agents in electronic commerce environments. The existing agents base their search on a predefined list of Webstores and, as such, they can be qualified as fixed-sample size searching agents. However, with the implementation of new Internet pricing schemes, this search rule may evolve toward more flexible search methods allowing for an explicit trade-off between the communication costs and the product price. One possible alternative is the sequential optimal search rule. Its adoption depends on its expected performance. The present paper analyses the relative performances of two types of search agents on a virtual market with costly information. At the theoretical equilibrium of the market, we show that the sequential rule-based searching agents with a reservation price always allow consumers to pay lower total costs.
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