Negotiation Life Cycle: An Approach in E-Negotiation with Prediction

Abstract

With the exponential increase in the use of web services it has become more and more important to make the traditional negotiation process automated and intelligent. Various tactics have been given till date which determines the behavior of the software agents in the negotiation process. Here we have given lifecycle of the negotiation process and presented a custom scenario to understand it better. Recently the active area of research has been prediction of partner's behavior which enables a negotiator to improve the utility gain for the adaptive negotiation agent and also achieve the agreement much quicker or look after much higher benefits. In this paper we review the various negotiation methods and the existing architecture. Although negotiation is practically very complex activity to automate without human intervention we have proposed architecture for predicting the opponents behavior which will take into consideration various factors which affect the process of negotiation. The basic concept is that the information about negotiators, their individual actions and dynamics can be used by software agents equipped with adaptive capabilities to learn from past negotiations and assist in selecting appropriate negotiation tactics.