Agent Standardization Issues in Electronic Commerce Systems

Position Paper

1. Motivation

With the increasing importance of electronic commerce across the Internet the need for agents to support both consumers and providers in purchasing and selling goods is growing rapidly. A number of prototypes have been developed to simulate an agent-based virtual marketplace (MAGMA, Kasbah, GroupLens).

As shown in Fig. 1 the traditional approach to electronic commerce requires a direct communication between the potential buyer and seller. The buyer collects information about a product by directly accessing the information provided by the seller. If the offer satisfies his needs he negotiates directly with the seller of the product. Negotiation, delivery and payment are usually done manually.

Figure 1

2. Architecture and Interfaces

The traditional approach has the following disadvantages:

1. It requires a long time to gather the necessary amount of information about a product, since all information sources have to be accessed manually.
2. The growing number of similar goods further increases this problem. The buyer is forced to compare a number of products before he is able to make a decision to buy.
3. For the seller of products it becomes increasingly difficult to get potential buyers to notice his products. He is forced to spend more time and money on advertising than necessary.
4. Information deficits on the side of the buyer or seller can lead to pricing inefficiencies

An agent-based architecture for electronic commerce allows the creation of a virtual marketplace in which a number of autonomous or semi-autonomous agents trade goods. This approach offers a number of new opportunities to reduce or even eliminate the disadvantages mentioned above. Agents are able to examine a large number of products before making a decision to buy or sell. This not only eliminates the need to manually collect information about products but also allows to negotiate an optimal price with the various sellers of a good.

Figure 2: Agent-based architecture

Fig. 2 shows the general architecture of an agent-based virtual marketplace. Instead of buyers and sellers, buying- and selling-agents communicate and negotiate with each other. The buying-agent collects information about a number of products and presents its conclusions to the buyer. The architecture must support some kind of type management or classification trees in which all goods are integrated. If the buyer is interested in purchasing the product the buying-agent contacts the selling agent and starts the negotiating process. During negotiations the agents are able to react to new feedback and go back to collect information about different products or services. Payment issues are settled automatically over an electronic banking facility.

3. Issues for Standardization

In order to implement the described system, a number of interfaces have to be specified and standardized. In the context of FIPA, the following interfaces are of particular importance:

• B-Agent - S-Agent: Language support for inter-agent communication has to be defined. It must include standards for posting and responding to offers or negotiating and executing transactions. The standard must also include negotiation parameters that can be specified by the user, e.g. the desired price, a minium/maximum price, and a deadline.
• Directory: A standard for type management and classification trees is of critical importance for the whole architecture. Bying and Selling Agents must be able to access the available goods in a standardized form.
• Administration and Policing: A central authority must administrate the transaction in order to control the activities of the involved agents and enforce correct behavior as well as the execution of transactions.

For other interfaces existing standards can be used. These interfaces include:

• B/S-Agent - Banking-Agent: In order to settle financial transactions, existing standards for the usage of electronic banking facilities can be used. This also includes the usage of specific forms of electronic money.
• Security: The communication-protocols and especially the communication with the banking-agent has to be secure.
• Product Delivery (storage and transfer): An important issue is the representation and handling of electronic and physical goods. The agents have to arrange for the delivery of goods and ensure that a specific item is not offered in more than one place at a time.

4. Related Work

OMG: Trader, Collections, Startup Services RFP (OS RFP5)

W3C and CommerceNet Joint Electronic Payment Initiative

5. Literature:

Tsvetovatyy / Gini: Toward a virtual marketplace

Chavez / Maes: Kasbah: An agent marketplace for buying and selling goods

Resnick: The role of brokers in electronic commerce

Vogel / Wittig: Discovering Mobile Code

Authors:

Ruediger Zarnekow, Andy Meyer, Hartmut Wittig
Multimedia Software GmbH Dresden
Business Unit Intelligent Agents and Systems
Riesaer Str. 5, 01129 Dresden, Germany
Tel.: +49 351 8505 354
e-mail: ruediger.zarnekow@mms-dresden.telekom.de
http://www.dtag.de/mms-dresden