Automatic Multi-Agent Negotiation in E-Procurement

With the growing trend toward the use of e-commerce, both buyers and suppliers are placing great emphasis on information technology to be competitive. The emergence of e-procurement offers both parties a great opportunity to realize substantial transaction cost deduction and higher efficiency in cooperation. While every step in a procurement process is fulfilled on the Internet, on-line negotiation plays a vital role in bargaining on the price and decision making. This paper outlines the research background and status quo of agent technology, analyzes the application of multi-agent in automatic negotiation and focus on negotiation process design, environment and its three dimensions, negotiation protocol, model and strategy under the bilateral negotiation with multi-attribute.