A market-based multi-issue negotiation model considering multiple preferences in dynamic E-marketplaces

Abstract

Electronic commerce has been a significant commercial phenomenon in recent years and autonomous agents have made the advantages of e-markets more distinct. However, as e-market environments become open and dynamic, existing agent negotiation approaches expose some limitations. Static negotiation strategies and offer evaluation approaches might fail to capture dynamic changes of market situations, as well as changes of negotiators' expectations on negotiation outcomes. When market situations change, agents may need modify their negotiation strategies, expectations and criteria on offer evaluations as well as counter-offer generations in order to maximize their profits. Furthermore, in multi-issue negotiations, agents may have multiple preferences, which might not be delivered by most of existing negotiation approaches. In this paper, we propose a market-based multi-issue negotiation model to capture the dynamic changes of negotiation environments and impacts on negotiation strategies, counter-offer generations and offer evaluations. Also, the proposed model allows negotiators to deliver multiple offers to match their different preferences and negotiators would have more chances to reach agreements. Experimental results illustrate improvements of the proposed model on negotiators' utilities and efficiencies of the whole negotiation system by comparing with the performance of NDF negotiation model. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.