Negotiation in electronic commerce: integrating negotiation support and software agent technologies

Abstract

Software agent and decision support are rapidly developing information technologies due to their potential in supporting and conducting electronic transactions and other business activities. Negotiation via the Web is currently supported by several technologies, such as negotiation support systems, group decision support systems and negotiation software agents. Typically, and despite the fact that these technologies address different issues and can complement each other, they are used separately. A large experiment conducted in the InterNeg project led us to suggest a Web-based integrated software environment to aid negotiators and undertake certain activities autonomously. The architecture of the software environment, its components and their functions are discussed in the paper.