Flexible Decision Control in an Autonomous Trading Agent

An autonomous trading agent is a complex piece of software that must operate in a competitive economic environment and support a research agenda. We describe the structure of decision processes in the MinneTAC trading agent, focusing on the use of evaluators – configurable, composable modules for data analysis and prediction that are chained together at runtime to support agent decision-making. Through a set of examples, we show how this structure supports sales and procurement decisions, and how those decision processes can be modified in useful ways by changing evaluator configurations. To put this work in context, we also report on results of an informal survey of agent design approaches among the competitors in the Trading Agent Competition for Supply Chain Management (TAC SCM).autonomous trading agent;decision processes

A demand-driven approach for a multi-agent system in Supply Chain Management

This paper presents the architecture of a multi-agent decision support system for Supply Chain Management (SCM) which has been designed to compete in the TAC SCM game. The behaviour of the system is demand-driven and the agents plan, predict, and react dynamically to changes in the market. The main strength of the system lies in the ability of the Demand agent to predict customer winning bid prices - the highest prices the agent can offer customers and still obtain their orders. This paper investigates the effect of the ability to predict customer order prices on the overall performance of the system. Four strategies are proposed and compared for predicting such prices. The experimental results reveal which strategies are better and show that there is a correlation between the accuracy of the models' predictions and the overall system performance: the more accurate the prediction of customer order prices, the higher the profit. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

E-commerce and its impact in logistic management: A state of art

Logistics management is defined as that part of the supply chain process that plans, implements, and controls the efficient, effective flow and storage of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption in order to meet customers' requirements. Traditional logistical issues may be amplified by an e-commerce venture. Adopting e-commerce may greatly expand the marketplace. The organization needs to be concerned with its ability to deliver its product to potential customers. Realizing the importance of E-commerce in logistic management, an attempt has been made in this paper to review the existing literature with the objective to gain insights into the impact of E-commerce in logistic management. The advantages of the E-commerce in logistic management are offered. Finally, summary of findings and calculations are presented

Agent Based E-Market: Framework, Design, and Implementation

Attempt has been made to design and develop a complete adoptive Multi Agent System pertaining to merchant brokering stage of Customer Buying Behaviour Model with the intent of appropriate framework. Intelligent agents are autonomous entity which observe and act upon an environment. In general, they are software robots and vitally used in variety of e-Business applications. This paper focuses on the discussions on electronic markets and the adoptive role, which agents can play in information transformation for automating e-market transactions. It is proposed to develop a framework for agent-based electronic markets for buyers and sellers totally with the assistance of software agents.Agent Oriented e-Business, Agent Oriented e-Markets, Buyer/Seller Agents, Java, Multi Agent Systems

SOME APPLICATIONS OF THE WEB AS AN INFORMATION TOOL IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY

Tourism is extremely dependent on information and communication industries. This is true all the more in an environment where tourism is a global industry (with some part of the value chain in the country of origin of the tourist and the remaining in the countries that are destinations). According to Kierzkovski et al. (1996) travel is one of the products “natural fits” with interactive media, in which context the Internet may gain particular relevance. In fact, traveling is one of the most popular online activities (Kierzkovski et al., 1996; Jonkheer, 1999; Pröll and Retschitzegger, 2000), with online expenditures rounding 22% by 2007 (NEWSBYTES, 2002). This aspect modifies not only the tourism business models per se, but consumers’ behaviour as well. Using the Internet as a means to promote the tourism organizations reduces dramatically the costs of advertisement. Also the consumer becomes closer to information and asymmetries in accessing the information are reduced. Disintermediation is another phenomenon consequent from the use of the Internet as an information tool. This article gathers relevant applications from different studies regarding the use of the Internet as a powerful information tool both towards the organizations and the consumers.Internet; Tourism; Information; Web applications

Psychological elements explaining the consumer's adoption and use of a website recommendation system: A theoretical framework proposal

The purpose of this paper is to understand, with an emphasis on the psychological perspective of the research problem, the consumer's adoption and use of a certain web site recommendation system as well as the main psychological outcomes involved. The approach takes the form of theoretical modelling. Findings: A conceptual model is proposed and discussed. A total of 20 research propositions are theoretically analyzed and justified. Research limitations/implications: The theoretical discussion developed here is not empirically validated. This represents an opportunity for future research. Practical implications: The ideas extracted from the discussion of the conceptual model should be a help for recommendation systems designers and web site managers, so that they may be more aware, when working with such systems, of the psychological process consumers undergo when interacting with them. In this regard, numerous practical reflections and suggestions are presented

Multiagent-Based Model For ESCM

Web based applications for Supply Chain Management (SCM) are now a necessity for every company in order to meet the increasing customer demands, to face the global competition and to make profit. Multiagent-based approach is appropriate for eSCM because it shows many of the characteristics a SCM system should have. For this reason, we have proposed a multiagent-based eSCM model which configures a virtual SC, automates the SC activities: selling, purchasing, manufacturing, planning, inventory, etc. This model will allow a better coordination of the supply chain network and will increase the effectiveness of Web and intel-ligent technologies employed in eSCM software

Designing an Agent for Information Extraction from Persian E-shops

E-shops are among the most conventional applications of Electronic Commerce. In these shops, the buyers search for their goods through key words or classifications and read the product description provided by the sellers. Though, when the number of items is high, this gets to be difficult for the users. On the one hand, there are too many e-shops, and browsing in these shops to find the best and most appropriate goods is a difficult and time-consuming process. On the other hand, product descriptions are not the same in different websites, and there are different product forms. This study investigates about products and sellers in various websites based on the conditions and user requirements through software agents which present the extracted information in the form of a table to the users which enables them to compare prices and each seller’s conditions without spending too much time for browsing. Using this method increases precision and recall indices comparing to a conventional user browsing