Expectation of trading agent behaviour in negotiation of electronic marketplace

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Ren, Fenghui | Zhang, Minjie | Fulcher, John

Affiliations: School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Wollongong, Australia, E-mail: {fren,minjie,john}@uow.edu.au

Note: [] Corresponding author.

Abstract: Electronic Commerce has been a very significant commercial phenomenon in recent years, and autonomous agents are widely adopted by business or individuals in electronic marketplaces to fulfill time consuming tasks in trading. Agent negotiation mechanisms are usually applied between conflicted agents in order to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. Prediction of trading agents' strategies and behaviours in negotiation is a very significant research topic in agent negotiation. By employing the prediction results on opponents' possible strategies and behaviours during a negotiation, trading agents can plan and perform corresponding strategies in order to maximize their own profits. Significant achievements have been made on this topic. However, most existing approaches are based on machine learning mechanisms, which may fail to capture opponents' behaviours in open and dynamic electronic marketplaces. In this paper, two agent behaviour expectation approaches are introduced to help trading agents to capture opponents' potential behaviours during a negotiation in complex e-marketplaces. (i) The regression analysis approach focuses on illustrating the main trends of opponents' trading behaviours; (ii) the vector analysis approach pays more attention to identifying opponents' detailed negotiation strategies. The experimental results show the efficiency and efficacy of the two proposed approaches in open and dynamic negotiation environments.

Keywords: Agent negotiation, e-marketplace, agent behaviour prediction

DOI: 10.3233/WIA-2012-0230

Journal: Web Intelligence and Agent Systems: An International Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 49-63, 2012