Abstract

Current electronic retail stores do not offer one-to-one price negotiation capabilities. From a consumer's perspective, price negotiation provides an opportunity to debate the price. From a vendor's perspective, the ability to negotiate allows for flexibility in pricing that a rigidly fixed price policy cannot offer. Hence, we feel that one-to-one price negotiation would be beneficial in online stores and e-commerce in general. Given the high cost of providing human sales agents online, we research if it is possible to design a practicable automated system that is able to autonomously negotiate on behalf of a retail vendor in a commercial one-to-one business environment. Specifically, this thesis explores the use of "agent assisted price negotiation" applicable between a consumer and a retail vendor. It describes the inherent difficulties involved in automating negotiation, provides a critical analysis of the current approaches to automated negotiation with regards to different business models, and then proposes an "information driven" methodology for the calculation of a "just-in-time personalized price". The thesis also provides the requirements and specifications for a simple and intuitive one-to-one negotiation protocol. As a proof of concept, a Java prototype of a software Sales Agent in a Multi-Agent System architecture is implemented and presented. Overall, by automating negotiation for e-commerce retailing, we hope to increase both the retailer and consumer satisfaction