On automated e‐business negotiations: Goal,policy, strategy,and plans of decision and action

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in automated e‐business negotiations. The automation of negotiation requires a decision model to capture the negotiation knowledge of policymakers and negotiation experts so that the decision‐making process can be carried out automatically. Current research on automated e‐business negotiations has focused on defining low‐level tactics (or negotiation rules) so that automated negotiation systems can carry out automated negotiation processes. These low‐level tactics are usually defined from a technical perspective, not from a business perspective. There is a gap between high‐level business negotiation goals and low‐level tactics. In this article, we distinguish the concepts of negotiation context, negotiation goals, negotiation strategy, and negotiation tactics and introduce a formal decision model to show the relations among these concepts. We show how high‐level negotiation goals can be formally mapped to low‐level tactics that can be used to affect the behavior of a negotiation system during the negotiation process. In business, a business organization faces different negotiation situations (or contexts) and determines different sets of goals for different negotiation contexts. In our decision model, a business policymaker sets negotiation goals from different perspectives, which are called goal dimensions. A negotiation policy is a functional mapping from a negotiation context to some quantitative measures (or goal values) for the goal dimensions to express how competitive the policymaker wants to reach that set of goals. A negotiation expert who has the experience and expertise to conduct negotiations would define the negotiation strategies needed for reaching the negotiation goals. Formally, a negotiation strategy is a functional mapping from a set of goal values to a set of decision‐action rules that implement negotiation tactics. The selected decision‐action rules can then be used to control the execution of an automated negotiation system, which conducts a negotiation on behalf of a business organization.     

The Effects of Multimedia Communication on Web-Based Negotiation

With the rapid growth of electronic commerce, there is growing demand forremote online negotiations. Although the Internet now enables audio and video communication, most Web-based negotiation systems are still text-based. There is, however, a lack of research on the effects of multimedia on remote negotiations. In this paper, we present a theoretical model to investigate the impacts of multimedia communication in an online negotiation setting. The constructs in our model include communication efficiency, communication effectiveness, and positive and negative social-emotional communication. Through a simulated house purchasing negotiation experiment, we study how different multimedia combinations (text only; text with audio; text with audio and video) affect our constructs and thus further influence negotiation results. Our results showed that both text with audio and text with audio and video communication were significantly preferred to text alone. However, the addition of video to text and audio communication in a negotiation environment was not found to be beneficial. It did not significantly improve communication efficiency, effectiveness or positive social-emotional communication, but distracted negotiators from focusing on the negotiation task. Our analysis also revealed that the communication efficiency construct did not correlate with the perceived success of the negotiation solution; however communication effectiveness and social-emotional communication did correlate with negotiation satisfaction.     

Design and Implementation of Business Objects for Automated Business Negotiations

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in the specification, generation and exchange of business objects in the context of electronic commerce. Common business objects have been defined for product catalogs, purchase orders and other business entities. However, no business objects have been defined and implemented for supporting automated business negotiations even though business negotiation is very much an integral part of business activities. In this work, we have designed and implemented a set of business negotiation objects for supporting the bargaining type of business negotiations. These objects define the operations and information contents needed for negotiation parties to express their requirements and constraints during a bargaining process. They correspond to a set of negotiation primitives, which is a superset of the negotiation-related primitives defined in two popular languages: ACL and COOL. The implementation of these objects is patterned after the business object documents in the XML format proposed by the Open Applications Group, thus conforming to the established standard. The incorporation of several types of constraint specifications in these business negotiation objects provides the negotiation parties and the negotiation servers that represent them much expressive power in specifying callforproposals and proposals. Two synchronization problems and their solutions associated with the withdrawal and modification of negotiation proposals are addressed and presented in this paper. The use of these business negotiation objects in a bilateral bargaining protocol is also presented. We have validated the utility of these objects in an integrated network environment, which consists of two replicated negotiation servers, two commercial products, and some other university research systems that form a supply chain.     

Modeling e-Negotiation Processes for a Service Oriented Architecture

Most of today's e-marketplaces support a single negotiation protocol. The protocol is usually built into the e-marketplace infrastructure, therefore if a new one is introduced then a time consuming and complex process of implementing it takes place. Moreover, participants in the e-marketplace need to adapt their interfaces to the new protocol, especially if they use automated tools to interact with the e-marketplace. This paper reports on a model-driven approach and a framework for rapid and user-friendly development of configurable service oriented e-negotiation systems. We believe that a formal specification of negotiation protocols and their separation from the market infrastructure that implements them is a step towards configurable e-negotiation systems. The protocols are graphically designed for the e-marketplace then mapped into web service orchestrations. Participants use automated negotiation systems to interact with the e-marketplace. These systems are generated based on the negotiation protocol implemented on the e-marketplace. A declarative language is used to specify negotiation strategies and tactics. We propose an algorithm to map Statechart models of negotiation protocols into web service orchestrations and we report on the current implementation of our framework.     

Strategies and language trends in learning success and failure of negotiation

In negotiation by electronic means, language is an important deal-making tool which helps realize negotiation strategies. Negotiators may use language to request information, exchange offers, persuade, threaten, as well as reach a compromise or find prospective partners. All this is recorded in texts exchanged by negotiators. We explore the language signals of strategies—argumentation, persuasion, negation, proposition. Leech and Svartvik’s approach to language in communication gives our study the necessary systematic background. It combines pragmatics, the communicative grammar and the meaning of English verbs. Language signals become features in the task of classifying those texts. We employ Statistical Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to find general trends that negotiation texts exhibit. Our hypothesis is that language signals help predict negotiation outcomes. We run experiments on the Inspire data. The electronic negotiation support system Inspire was gathering data for several years. The data include text messages which negotiators may exchange while trading offers. We conduct a series of Machine Learning experiments to predict the negotiation outcome from the texts associated with first halves of negotiations. We compare the results with the classification of complete negotiations. We conclude the paper with an analysis of the results and a list of suggestions for future work.     

Coordinating electronic commerce activities in MANIFOLD

Modern electronic commerce environments are heavily web-based and involve issues such as distributed execution, multiuser interactive access or interface with and use of middleware platforms. Thus, their components exhibit the properties of communication, cooperation and coordination as in CSCW, groupware or workflow management systems. In this paper we examine the potential of using coordination technology to model electronic commerce activities and we show the benefits of such an approach. Furthermore, we argue that control-oriented, event-driven coordination models (which enjoy some inherent properties such as security) are more suitable for electronic commerce than data-driven ones which are based on accessing an open shared communication medium in almost unrestricted ways. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

电子商务对物流的影响

20世纪末期,在我国兴起了电子商务热潮,国内许多公司纷纷注册自己的电子商务公司,直到近几年电子商务热潮才逐渐冷静下来,人们才实实在在的把目光投向了物流。那么,怎样发展电子商务、怎样才能积极有效的处理好电子商务和物流的关系,已成为人们普遍关心的问题之一。     

浅析电子商务C2C存在的问题及对策

互联网的普及给人类的生活带来了方方面面的改变,在商业领域,因特网的介入直接催生了电子商务,我国电子商务始于1997年,短短十数载,电子商务以庞大的几何数增长,而电子商务的模式对其发展前景则起着至关重要的作用,在当前特定的经济环境下,如何达成买卖双方的共赢是一个很值得探讨的问题。本文试图从电子商务的7中模式中选择最有代表性的C2C进行简单的阐述,从专业的角度展望电子商务的发展前景。     

A methodology for managing risk in electronic transactions over the Internet

The explosive growth of the Internet has made possible an economic transformation in which commerce will become largely electronic. In this vision, the medium of communication and negotiation becomes a distributed network of computers equipped with robust, secure and trusted “cash” mechanisms. It is thus of paramount importance to design mechanisms that will ensure timely and reliable transactions in cyberspace. In this paper we present a methodology for quantitatively managing the risk and cost of executing transactions in a distributed network environment by exploiting an analogy with modern financial portfolio theory. We illustrate the methodology with several concrete examples under different pricing schemes, as well as with empirical measurements of Internet traffic. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

物流对电子商务发展的制约及对策

物流是电子商务系统的重要组成部分,电子商务若想快速发展离不开物流体系的高效发展。目前我国电子商务发展迅速,而物流的发展虽然速度很快,但与电子商务的快速发展相比,物流已经成了我国电子商务发展的制约瓶颈,直接制约着电子商务的前进步伐。本文将对物流对电子商务发展的制约表现及对策方面进行深入的探讨。     

The Effect of Delays in Information Exchange in Electronic Markets

In this research I explored the impact of information delays in a simple model of negotiation through an electronic market system. I found that a market can accurately reflect buyers' and sellers' preferences only if the rate of injection of price information multiplied by the rate of transfer of price information falls between 0 and 2. It is argued that markets adjust themselves to this constraint in practice. The alternatives are to experience chaotic and catastrophic volatility in prices or to go out of operation. Thus, electronic commerce can provide value beyond merely speeding up operations and increasing capacity. It also helps avoid misleading behavior by both buyer and seller and allows markets to operate in a wider range of trading environments.     

The Montreal Taxonomy for Electronic Negotiations

Research in the domain of electronic negotiations is a rather new and very interdisciplinary field, which gains more and more attention due to the industry hype and momentum regarding electronic commerce and electronic markets. Negotiations in a narrow sense (not taking into account simple forms such as hit and take) have been identified as an advantageous coordination mechanism for the interaction of buyers and sellers in electronic markets that transcend the selling of commodities or uniform goods. Hence, support for negotiations may become a critical success factor for electronic markets, especially regarding the recent failures of many industrial ventures. This paper presents the Montreal Taxonomy, which allows not only for the exact characterisation and comparison of a broad variety of electronic negotiation designs and systems, ranging from auctions to bilateral bargaining tables, but could also lead towards a more structured approach for the design of electronic negotiations.     

Towards a Structured Design of Electronic Negotiations

Global communication networks and advances in information technology enable the design of information systems facilitating effective formulation and efficient resolution of negotiation problems. Increasingly, these systems guide negotiators in clarifying the relevant issues, provide media for offer formulation and exchange, and help in achieving an agreement. In practice, the task of analysing, modelling, designing and implementing electronic negotiation media demands a systematic, traceable and reproducible approach. An engineering approach to media specification and construction has these characteristics. In this paper, we provide a rationale for the engineering approach that allows pragmatic adoption of economic and social sciences perspectives on negotiated decisions for the purpose of supporting and undertaking electronic negotiations. Similarities and differences of different theories that underlie on-going studies of electronic negotiations are identified. This provides a basis for integration of different theories and approaches for the specific purpose of the design of effective electronic negotiations. Drawing on diverse streams of literature in different fields such as economics, management, computer, and behavioural sciences, we present an example of an integration of three significant streams of theoretical and applied research involving negotiations, traditional auctions and on-line auctions.     

A Time-Bound Framework for Negotiation and Decision Making of Virtual Manufacturing Enterprise

Virtual manufacturing has 2 characteristics as an agent-based electronic commerce environment: dynamic nature of resource status and variety of agents' decision-making (i.e., scheduling) model. To reflect the characteristics, a relevant negotiation protocol should be designed and an appropriate decision-making model should be developed. In this article, from the perspective of a sales agent that is a middle man between customers and manufacturers in a virtual manufacturing environment, we provide a case study that suggests a time-bound framework for external negotiation between sales agents and customer agents, and internal cooperation between sales agents and manufacturing agents. We assume a job shop as the production model of a virtual manufacturing enterprise and formulate the optimal order selection problem with mixed integer programming, but its computation time is not acceptable for real-world problems. For this time-constrained decision making, we develop a genetic algorithm as an anytime problem-solving method for the scheduling of the production model, which shows a reasonable computation time for real-world cases and good incremental problem-solving capability.     

A Generic Framework for Automated Multi-attribute Negotiation

Agents in a negotiation may have to negotiate multiple issues simultaneously. Automated multi-attribute negotiation provides an important mechanism for distributed decision makers to reach agreements on multiple issues. Moreover, it also furnishes the opportunity to reach “win–win” solutions. In this paper, we first provide a survey that synthesizes the research on multi-attribute negotiation. We discuss the limitations of the existing research and conclude that three key issues need further study: incomplete information, Pareto optimality, and tractability. We then present a generic framework for automated multi-attribute negotiation with two new mechanisms that address the above issues. Finally, we discuss the challenges and directions for future work.     

Integrating Time-Preferences into E-Negotiation Systems: A Model,Elicitation Approach and Experimental Implications

Researchers have advocated that the acquisition of user preferences is important to the successful adoption of electronic negotiation systems. In this paper, we focus on one such preference, namely time preference, wherein the price of a good/service varies according to the delivery/consumption time. Time preference is a behavioral aspect that varies across buyers. We discuss how different types of preferences can be elicited, represented and integrated with electronic negotiations. We discuss three experiments to study the effect of time preferences on negotiation. The first is a preference elicitation experiment involving 36 subjects. The next two are agent-to-agent negotiation experiments, one based on the individual preferences obtained earlier and the other based on an expanded dataset on both individual preferences as well as negotiation parameters. The agent-based experiment compares outcomes and efficiencies between the standard exponential discounting model and two behavioral models of time preference. Our results bring out the preferences of subjects, as well as the extent to which negotiation is affected and enhanced by the incorporation of time-preferences.     

Reversing the lead,or a series of unfortunate events? NYMEX,ICE, and Amaranth

A number of studies compare the efficiency and transparency of floor trading with automated/electronic trading systems in the competition for order flow. Although most of these studies find that electronic systems lead price discovery, a few studies highlight the weaknesses of electronic trading in highly volatile market conditions. A series of unusual events in 2006, sparking extreme volatility in natural gas futures trading, provide an ideal setting to revisit the resilience of trading system price leadership in the face of high volatility. We estimate time‐varying Hasbrouck‐style information shares to investigate the intertemporal and cross‐sectional dynamics in price discovery. The results strongly suggest that the information share is time‐dependent and contract‐dependent. Floor trading dominates price discovery in the less liquid longer‐maturity contracts, whereas electronic trading dominates price discovery in the most liquid spot‐month contract. We find that the floor trading information share increases significantly with realized volatility. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:1130–1160, 2009     

项目教学法在电子商务实训课中的应用研究

近年来,项目教学法在职业院校专业教学中得到广泛的应用并且取得了不小的成效,在电子商务专业实训课程的探索与构建过程中,尝试将项目教学法引入其中,形成以项目为核心的电子商务实训模块,最终构建出基于项目教学法的电子商务实训课程,本文对此进行了相关的探索与论述。     

项目教学是电子商务教育由虚到实的重要途径

电子商务专业是一个综合性非常强的专业,在专业教学过程中普遍存在着理论知识过于空泛,学生无法学吼致用的实际问题。为了解决这一问题,提升学生的专业技能,作者采用了项目教学的方法进行探索,经过几年的摸索,取得了一些经验和成栗。初步验证了项目教学是让电子商务教学从虚到实的一种行之有效的教学方法。